Other » Status of Virgin/Burst

I figured that most of you know this information, but it is useful to have it posted somewhere on the forum for reference.

As most of you know, Toonstruck was published by Virgin Interactive and developed by Burst which itself was a division of Virgin Interactive.

1999 - The Virgin Group sold Virgin Interactive to a French company called Titus Software (presumably along with Burst).
2003 - Titus Software changed its name to Avelon Interactive, which was the name of the subsidiary of Titus responsible for distributing games.
2004 - Titus/Avelon ceased trading.

No game has been released under the Burst Studios arm since 1997 (a game called "Grand Slam"). That branch was presumably closed shortly before, after or during the purchase by Titus from Virgin Interactive.

No companies currently own the rights to the game, but that does not mean that someone could not get hold of the rights if someone does not already have them. If someone does own the rights to Toonstruck, I would REALLY like to find out who they are.

In this world there is nothing, that hasn't got an owner.
If the company doesn't own it, maybe the former boss of that company does, or maybe the producer.
If not, then every artist owns his art himself.

Yeah exactly. My guess would be that the person/company who owns it don't even know they do - if they bought the collective rights to all the games from the former company. However, there have only been a handful of cases where rights for abandonware of collapsed companies have been claimed for. Its really a gray area, especially in this case.

Dark grey, I guess
It's not easy to trace those transactions...