Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert “wasn’t even told” about Sea of Thieves DLC

If Microsoft’s Rare studio and Disney’s Lucasfilm Games (formerly LucasArts) want to make a Monkey Island crossover DLC for Sea of Thieves, they do not, in fact, have to ask the original game’s creator, Ron Gilbert.

In a Mastodon thread responding to a fan’s question on Sunday, Gilbert wrote that, “nope,” he wasn’t involved with Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island, an expansion to Rare Limited’s multiplayer open-world pirate game themed around the iconic Monkey Island point-and-click adventure series. “Wasn’t even told about it. Happened behind my back.”

Terrible Toybox, the firm with which Gilbert has recently worked to release games like Thimbleweed Park and Return to Monkey Island, attempted to clarify Gilbert’s statement on Monday, telling Eurogamer that Disney “did give [Gilbert] a heads-up on the project as a courtesy, but the game was well into development at that point, and he wasn’t given the opportunity to be meaningfully involved.”

When Gilbert teamed up with original Monkey Island programmer and writer Dave Grossman to start on Return to Monkey Island, they had to approach Disney, which acquired the series’ original developer and publisher, LucasArts, in 2012. When we interviewed Gilbert in April 2022, he said that he had “lengthy conversations” with Disney about his and Grossman’s pitch for a new game and was happy the corporation allowed him extensive creative freedom.

That IP-owner-to-creator channel is seemingly a mostly one-way transmission. While Gilbert was quietly unaware of the newest Monkey Island content, Dominic Armato, the iconic voice of series hero Guybrush Threepwood, contributed his talents to the project. The trailer for the DLC features many other key aspects of Monkey Island lore: the SCUMM Bar, used-ship salesman Stan S. Stanman, undead pirate captain LeChuck, and more.

One fan suggests that some of the harm has been lessened by this quiet snub. Legend would seem to take place in the “non-Gilbert timeline of post-[Curse of Monkey Island].” Curse (the first to feature voice acting from Armato), Escape from Monkey Island (a non-SCUMM, non-point-and-click game), and Tales of Monkey Island (a Telltale game licensed from LucasArts, with requisite quick-time events) were all developed without Gilbert, though he was seemingly made aware of their development beforehand.

Legend of Monkey Island can be played either single-player or with a more typical pirate crew, with three installments landing each month starting July 20. I’ve never played Sea of Thieves, but despite its Gilbert-less provenance, I’m a bit intrigued now to see if I could jump in with this.