My Little Pony producer teams up with fans to resurrect its copyright-infringing brony fighter

Mane6's beloved fan-made fighting game and EVO candidate My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic was shut down last month after receiving a cease and desist letter from Hasbro, but it looks like these water-coloured warhorses aren't entirely being out out to pasture as My Little Pony producer Lauren Faust has teamed up with the indie team to resurrect the fighter in a form that doesn't step on any of Hasbro's hooves.

"With Lauren's help, we are going to finish this game, but it will no longer be based on the MLP franchise," wrote Mane6 on its official site. "It will be all new characters in a new setting, while keeping the moves, mechanics, and style of the game we wanted to make from the start. This means a lot of work for us, and a bunch of new challenges, but we're excited about the possibilities that come along with them."

"I'm so super psyched to be a part of this!" wrote Faust. "I hope I can do my little part to help Mane6 finish up this game in a way that stays true to the spirit of the original - but in a way that can freely be shared! I hope you like what we come up with."

That Hasbro shut the unlicensed My Little Pony related fighter down isn't terribly surprising, but Mane6 was never making any money off it (though it did use the game to raise money for breast cancer research), so it didn't exactly need to shut it down. After all, Nintendo hasn't had an issue with people making various Mario crossover games, so long as they're non-commercial ventures. Of course, when Super Mario Bros. Crossover developer Exploding Rabbit wanted to make money off its fan-favourite, it decided to create a new game that would swap its cast out for thinly-veiled parodies of their source material. It looks like Mane6 is following a similar tack as apparently Hasbro didn't think fighting was so magic after all.