The Silver Lining has been in development for eight years, a fan project based on the King's Quest-license. When Vivendi owned the rights to the old Sierra IPs, an agreement was made between the developers and the company; an agreement that allowed the indie developers to continue production as a non-profit project.
But now, with Activision holding the rights to the Sierra IPs, The Silver Lining has been shut down. The dev team writes that after "talks and negotiations in the last few months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached the decision that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining". All materials have been taken down from the site, with most of the forums to be removed in the near future.
It's a sad day for indie development everywhere.
(via Joystiq)