Frank Herbert's Estate Once Targeted Virtual World Cosplayers of Dune -- And Now Virtual Worlds Are Being Used to Promote Dune

With the new Dune movie now a huge international hit and part 2 just announced, I was thinking back to 2009, when lawyers with Frank Herbert's estate went after a small group of Dune fans cosplaying their favorite book in Second Life:

[L]ast weekend Werribee and other members received legal notices from Linden Lab via Trident Media Group, a New York literary agency which maintains the Herbert Estate. "In particular," the notice reads, "Trident Media Group has complained about your use of characters, concepts and other material associated with 'Dune' in the Second Life environment." Those include roleplay locations entitled "Sardaukar Mask", "Fremen Domain", and "Bene Gesserit Retreat". The Lindens' notice ordered Werribee and his group to remove such titles and objects from Second Life within two days, or the company would do so itself.

But that was 12 years ago; now, virtual worlds are an integral part of the promotion for the Herbert adaptation, with official Dune content available in Fortnite (video below) and from Ready Player Me, an avatar-creation system (make your Dune avatar here). These are of course officially licensed via the movie's studio and estate, but I just noticed there's also many fan-made Dune creations in ROBLOX and on VRChat. I suspect those won't receive the same cease-and-desist treatment, seeing as how virtual world gamers are now understood to be a crucial part of any media ecosystem, but we'll see! 

Wait, no Voice-based weapons system? Disappointed!