UPDATE: Make sure you read the official statement from Stardock regarding newer events.
Re: November's blog post by Paul and Fred claiming Stardock's objection to their new game being promoted as a "true sequel" constitutes Stardock preventing them from doing a new game.
We are disappointed that Paul and Fred, two people we have a great deal of respect and admiration for, have chosen to imply that we are somehow preventing them from working on their new game.
Stardock has been nothing but supportive of their new project and wish them the best. I personally made the post here on StarControl.com in support of it.
With regards to their contentions:
First, as many people know, the classic Star Control games have been available for sale long before Stardock acquired the rights from Atari four years ago. For the entirety of the time we have held the rights, they have been getting paid for those sales. If they had an objection to the games being sold this is something that could and should have been addressed before we were ever involved.
Second, we have stated, repeatedly and consistently for over four years that we are not using any of the aliens from the classic series. As we have stated, our position is that, to the best of our knowledge, the classic alien IP is owned by them.
We have also discussed, at length, why it wasn't commercially viable for us to attempt to continue or retell the Ur-Quan story. 25 years is just too long of a gap. This is one of the reasons why we have been so excited about Paul and Fred's project. Their game frees us to introduce new characters and a new story into the new Star Control while allowing fans of the classic series a way to continue the classic story. This strikes us as a win-win situation.
Lastly, when we acquired Star Control from Atari in 2013, many assets were transferred to us including the various publishing agreements to the Star Control franchise. The short version is that the classic IP is messy. We understand that this makes them "really really angry" but we weren't a party to that agreement. All we can do is try to put something together that releases them from the restrictions placed on their IP that they agreed to and transfer any and all rights and responsibilities to them. We want them to make Ghosts but we don't want any liability or association with it.
Given the disturbing and unanticipated post by Paul and Fred, we are persuaded more than ever that a clear and irrefutable document that makes it clear that we are not associated or involved with their new game is needed.
We have nothing but respect and admiration for Paul and Fred and wish them well in their new project.
Update 12/4/2017:
Paul and Fred continue to make unsubstantiated claims regarding the DOS-based Star Control games. If they have any documentation to provide evidence to their assertions, we have yet to see them.
Stardock, by contrast, possesses a perpetual, exclusive, worldwide licensing and sales agreement that was explicitly transferred to us by Atari who in turn acquired it from Accolade that has Paul Reiche's signature along with a signed distribution agreement between Atari and GOG for the DOS Accolade Star Control games.
The tone of their blog posts is similar to the kind of correspondence they had with us since the announcement of their Ur-Quan Masters successor, vague, full of demands and without any documentation.
With all due respect to Paul and Fred, they really should talk to competent legal counsel instead of making blog posts.
Update 12/5/2017:
Dealing with the sales and distribution of 20+ year old DOS games is an unusual way to spend a Tuesday afternoon. Nevertheless...
Atari had transferred to Stardock a signed agreement between Atari's President and GOG that we assumed was the agreement. Paul and Fred claimed they were the ones who had set up the agreement and upon verification with GOG, we instructed them to terminate this agreement which they have which we appreciate.
The games are now correctly transferred to Stardock and we will continue to ensue that Fred and Paul receive royalty payments for the games per the publishing agreement. We apologize if anyone was inconvenienced.
Old IP can be messy to deal with. The best way to deal with that is to have the parties talk to each other (as opposed to making public Internet posts) and work something out. We remain committed to dealing with this situation with as much restraint and gentleness as possible.
Update 2/27/2018
Added link to https://www.starcontrol.com/article/487690/qa-regarding-star-control-and-paul-and-fred to address Paul and Fred's latest complaints.
At this stage, the parties are seeking to resolve their disagreements in court. Stardock wishes this could have been resolved otherwise.
For the record, if Paul and Fred had simply announced their game as a sequel to Ur-Quan Masters and requested Stardock to remove the DOS games from distribution, Stardock would have complied out of respect, even if we would have been unhappy that they chose now, after 25 years, to jump back in the middle of Stardock's efforts to bring Star Control back.
However, by promoting their new game as a "direct-sequel" to Star Control (and in other places as the "true" sequel) while using the Star Control box art (which is owned by Stardock) a great deal of consumer confusion has been created requiring Stardock to protect its IP rights.
Other links:
At the end of the day, all you truly want is a great space adventure game authored the Stardock style? The actual "Star Control" name and past contents don't really make it or break it for you? So, it could be called "Stardock: Origins" (which would be a great way to tie in all the other properties), so long as Stardock does it the Stardock way you have come to love and enjoy, it would be fine for you?
Are you saying that Stardock is not allowed to use a trademark which it legally bought?
...What? You're being unnecessarily defensive. He wasn't even talking about what Stardock should or shouldn't do, but rather what Lars would like them to do.
You haven't seen their posts in other places.
To those who keep defending Copyright Abuse, read this post and understand the damage that it is doing.
Of course not. Presently, the "Star Control" trademark is Stardock's. The paperwork this there and it is registered as Alive upon the registration. I do have some serious objections to the trademark filings of the Star Control 2 alien race names. But that's another debate there.
The point I'm trying to understand where the significance of the "Star Control" use predominantly resides. It's strange to me for people to want a "Star Control" game, but oddly just in name, as they express no strong feelings either way with the previous content under that title. If it's that they want Stardock to create a fun, well-made space adventure game called "Star Control", that's perfectly fine. It just makes actions outside of the immediate trademark defense, seem superfluous, odd expenditures of time and resources.
I, personally, have run into a similar situation with the Fallout series. I was a fan of the original Fallout games, even Tactics. So, it has been baffling to me with the direction that Bethesda took when they bought the entire IP (trademarks and copyrights). With Bethesda's Fallout situation, they strictly have demonstrated, relatively on the other side of the spectrum from Stardock's Star Control situation, a strong disinterest with the detailed aspects of the original lore overall. It could be argued that they only really wanted the surface elements from the original IP. Similarly, fans of the new Fallout series mostly show no strong feelings about how Bethesda handles the old lore and content. Most show that they are primarily concerned with present efforts of the current company they have personal loyalty to. I understand that if that's the case.
If it's that's the case this time, where most folks just want another good Stardock game... Then, I'm left with more unresolved questions about this situation.
@Darkgildon If you are asking me my opinion, to be honest Stardock could call it whatever and as long as it has a good story, and good game play I will play it and tell my friends.
However, the name 'Star Control' just sounds cool. It really does. I like it and well since its already on the label, I say lets use it.
I have zero interest in learning about any of the characters in the UQM, SCI or II. I really could care less. If for example a game company used the same 'type of story' that was done in SCI or II, I would never know.
Again it boils down for almost everyone, and I speak for me and my circle of folks I know > (guys and gals in our late 40's and early 50's) that if the game play is good and the story is something to talk about (good), then that is all that matters.
We have been playing MMO's and games since 95 back on the Amiga. Ill tell my friends and they will tell their friends. ...and that is better then any advertising a seller can buy.
What you state as copyright abuse is just the normal law in the United States and the core has remained unchanged since its inception. In fact, copyright as of the 1790 Act would last 28 years before requiring updated registration. Now thanks to various entertainment industry efforts, it's now Lifetime of the creator + 70 years. (You may thank Disney for a lot of that effort.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Duration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_term
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_lengths
It's nothing new for someone to create and not do anything with it for a long period of time. It's within their rights granted by the laws that the creator has control over their copyrighted work for at least their lifetime and in the United States copyright is granted upon creation of the work. Official registrations are just legal leverage, public notification, and set a point to calculate damages for infringement.
Honestly my expectation is that Star Control: Origins will be in the same style as the original series. Same great story, adventure, quirky dialogue, great gameplay, amazing music, and good graphics. Sounds like once the drama gets sorted, we can have a return of the races we remember from SC2 that will have the same personalities as before, but in a new storyline (if I've understood previous posts around where the lines get drawn on what Stardock believes they'll be able to use). That to me would be a big win. I don't think I really care who's name is on the box as long as the game is what I expect it to be.
It's like my constant disappointment with the Masters of Orion reboots. They keep missing the mark badly. MoO 3 was a spreadsheet/micromanagement nightmare game and the MoO reboot I never played, but from the reviews and gameplay, seems like it missed the mark as well. Just give me MoO 2 with better graphics with some of the tedium of managing a large empire resolved and intelligent new features that enhance gameplay vs bogging it down. That's an auto-win for me. Sword of the Stars was an excellent space 4x in a similar grain as MoO 2. Shame the 2nd game was a disaster.
Anyways, I'm not going to judge SC:O until I have it in my hands. Everything I've seen has been promising and you have a team of passionate people working on it (big plus), so chances are it'll turn out to be a great game. Time will tell.
@Starkillr: Agreed.
My opinion on these things is well known. For instance, we bid on the Master of Orion IP too. If we had got it, you can bet that we would have developed a Master of Orion game that was a natural evolution of Master of Orion II.
When we released Ashes of the Singularity, we spent around $600,000 in marketing. Acquiring Star Control for $300,000 allowed us to instantly communicate the type of game it would be saving us hundreds of thousands of dollars telling people it plays like "Star Control II".
I am one of the die hard fans of Star Control. But I've now had 4 years of talking to fans and the % of them who actually finished it is tiny. Those that remember any aliens vaguely remember a green caterpillar type alien and an alien that yelled insults in battle. That's basically the extent.
I've met far more people who remember the music (Riku and Dan made that). I've met people who can still hum Riku's music. In fact, I've met more people who can hum Riku's music than can tell you the general plot of Star Control II beyond that humans had lost some war and you had to free them.
I know the SC2 lore inside and out. But as I've said, it was never commercially viable for us to use that lore. We really needed Paul and Fred to go and continue that lore so that we could point the hard-core fan base to it. What we didn't expect was that they would announce a game as the "true" sequel to Star Control and grossly interfere with our marketing of the new Star Control game. The timing, hostility and trademark infringement combo was not something I would have ever expected from them in a million years.
The timing alone was what made me suspicious of P&F, why allow SCO to be developed for 4 years? It doesn't make any sense to me. They shouldn't have allowed Atari to sell it in the first place, they are acting like 'copyright trolls' just waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Atari had the trademark. But they didn't claim to own the copyrights (as far as I know anyway).
Stardock's intention was to use the trademark because of the brand-awareness of what a Star Control game means (a specific combination of action, adventure, exploration and story). We don't really know for sure what P&F own we just know what we don't own (we have no claim on the copyrights on SC1/2 other than a *license* to use their copyrights which we haven't used beyond continuing to sell the DOS games online just as those games have been sold since before we acquired it).
From what I read in rockpapershotgun:
Ford and Reiche’s counterclaim seems to be pushing to take control of Star Control again. They claim that, owing to various expiration and termination clauses in their agreements with Accolade, “all rights to Star Control, Star Control II, and Reiche’s Preexisting Characters used in Star Control 3 reverted to Reiche on or about April 1, 2001” – and they want a judgement to state that decisively.
This is what I'm referring to. According to this claim Atari shouldn't even be able to sell it in the first place right?
What I mean is, if there is truth in what P&F said then it means they are the laziest guys ever, why enforce it now?
And that is why I'm suspicious of them because they could have avoided it all if they enforced it before Stardock bought it in the first place. So all this mess is actually their fault for not enforcing it when they should which they said goes as far as 2001.
Or am I reading this wrong?
I've played and finished Star Control 1 and 2 (and enjoyed it) and am looking forward to the new game, even if it doesn't have the same aliens and is a new story.
That it is being rebooted as an origin story with a different timeline actually appeals to me. While the lore around the original is good and deep, the fact that it is 25 years old makes it hard to do a story that continues it without having to either have heaps of explanation in a new game, or make it so people need to go back and play the old ones for it to make sense. It can be done, but isn't easy.
For me the style of gameplay (ground and space exploration), graphics and humour are what interests me, since there aren't that many of similar style these days.
Yep, I remember when you were talking about going to the auction with the hopes of securing both Star Control and Masters of Orion. I was definitely rooting for you to get both because I was confident you guys would do them both justice. That being said, have you approached Wargaming.net about buying the MoO IP? Or perhaps alternatively they could license the IP for you to develop? They probably made out ok financially because it takes a while for folks to realize they've been duped, but I wonder what their appetite to keep trying is. I read that the owner of their company is super passionate about MoO as well. Maybe once you've recouped some investment from SC:O this will be easier to do.
I am definitely a die hard Star Control fan. My brothers and I used to play super melee with Star Control 1 all the time. It was a big deal when SC2 came out. I was banned by my parents from playing on the PC at the time, but I snuck downstairs, turned the sound down really low and installed it anyways. Eventually they found out and locked the keyboard away (like that would stop me), but I played that game into the ground. Absolutely loved it and my brothers and I played that super melee just as much as the last one (I was generally the king of super melee). I remember even hiding the star map when my brothers wanted a friend to "borrow" the game so they could play it. Since I paid for it with my money and given my experience trading/lending NES games back in the day, I wasn't about to let that starmap go! Good times...
I'm sorry, but I have to ask, how does having a powerful PC relate to UQM being tedious to play? unless new hardware somehow makes it run worse somehow?
I mean, obviously old games are old, and their controls, general design, and graphics will bear that burden. SC2 I feel is one of the games that has aged rather gracefully from the 90ies (unlike early 3d games, or FMV games), especially because of the UQM remake, to the point that I've seen several blind play-throughs from people in recent years that have generally had surprisingly few complaints of the aged mechanics (at least if they went into the game realizing it's a 90ies game; better save often and in multiple slots).
I'm just curious if you meant that the game is too old for you to enjoy properly (which is a completely valid opinion, I have this feeling about many old games, some that I even enjoyed when they were new), or if something with a new gaming PC makes it un-enjoyable to play UQM?
This is interesting. I assume even Star Control: Origins needs some marketing - you simply need to make people aware the game exists, regardless of anything else.
But what you wrote i read as that the price difference between saying this "is Star Control" and this "plays like Star Control" is 300 000 USD... thats kinda difficult to believe. You got to "say it" anyway, thats what you spend the marketing money on - as you want people to know about your game, but otherwise, i am totally not convinced with your logic behind it.
I dont think you would get more people to buy Ashes, if you got license for SupCom and called it SupCom 3 instead - in other words, it is IMO mostly the SupCom fans who bought Ashes based on the promise its gonna be game in similar vein - the ones who did not buy it, were the ones who got to play it somewhere or saw some gameplay videos or read about things which made Ashes different and were not comfortable with those changes. I doubt someone failed to buy it, cause saying "it is like SupCom" was not enough to make it clear.
BTW, speaking of this licensing stuff, and knowing now that aside of StarControl IP you tried to get Master of Orion too, and i recall Homeworld too, i wonder what are the price for licenses to TV shows? Are they to steep to get to even consider or do the TV studios simply dont want to sell? Surely you are aware of acclaim and popularity the Star Trek Armada III mod for Sins is getting - and personally, while i am fine with just Sins sequel, i would bit your hands off, (and i am sure i am not alone), if you got Star Trek license somehow, and applied it on sins-like game. If Star Trek is too expensive, then perhaps Babylon 5?
Actually, that’s a very good analogy.
Wargaming bought the Total Annihilation trademark for something near $1.6M. Why? Because that has a lot of name recognition.
If Ashes f the Singularity had been called Supreme Commander 3 (would have required design changes to make it a SupCom game) we’d probably have sold multiples of what it has sold so far.
Brand awareness is very valuable. Ask the latest owner of Atari.
That is the thing, you think you would "probably" sell more copies, but you have no factual data to support such claim, do you? Except the belief that brand recognition matters, which is something, i am not going to contest, as its indeed true - i just think it is more complicated and every case needs to be judged separately - in other words you could truly have more success with SupCom brand than with StarControl, as the former is more "contemporary" and better known among current player base.
Anyway, you say, if you had SupCom brand, it would have required design changes to make it SupCom game. You would have probably sold more copies. And how many of those additional copies sold would be down to those design changes you made to make it SupCom game in contrast to the numbers sold strictly cause it holds SupCom brand on the box?
Maybe if you made those SupCom design changes within Ashes, even without SupCom license, keeping the name Ashes, you would sell more? Cause whatever changes you made (like refusing Strategic Zoom in the early stages of the game) were reason why SupCom fans did not buy into Ashes as they otherwise would?
What about the "Star Trek / B5" part of my previous post, care to comment on that?
I'm really not going to get into a debate with someone who isn't clear on how important brands are to sales or suggests there isn't vast empirical data on it.
Two sodas. They're identical. One is called Coca Cola. The other is called "Fizz One".
We can debate on the value of these brands. But that's subjective and unless you have a background in marketing and product sales, it's not a very interesting discussion to have.
I dont have any background of that sort. And i am not saying that there is no empirical data on how important brands are. However, i doubt there is any study targeted specifically on computer game brands and how these influence customers. Pretending its the same way and to the same extent as with sodas is... lets just say pretty much saying both are targeting same kind of customer. Surely its not that simple?
Wargaming.net paid about $2M for the Master of Orion mark.
It's like asking why bother advertising?
Broadly speaking, the goal of marketing is to push/pull customers towards a specific objective (often towards sales conversion).
As you may recall, there was a Supreme Commander 2 which did not play that much like Supreme Commander 1. Supreme Commander 2 sold over a million units. I suspect the average SupCom:FA fan prefers Ashes over SupCom 2.
Wargaming.net paid about $2M for the Master of Orion mark. It's like asking why bother advertising? Broadly speaking, the goal of marketing is to push/pull customers towards a specific objective (often towards sales conversion).As you may recall, there was a Supreme Commander 2 which did not play that much like Supreme Commander 1. Supreme Commander 2 sold over a million units. I suspect the average SupCom:FA fan prefers Ashes over SupCom 2.
So in other words SupCom 2 sold more than Ashes to this point, right? You assume its because the brand, and its surely to certain extent true, but you need to consider other reasons, why its not as successful.
With SupCom 2, the fans of the original game expected more of the same. That did not happen for various reasons.
Ashes, on other hand, was in its beginning:
- more compared to Total Annihilation that SupCom
- lacked strategic zoom, which is SupCom´s major feature, and even though you think average SC:FA fan my prefer Escalation over SC2 now, that might not have been true with vanilla game
- SupCom2 was pretty much full feature game at its release, having 3 factions, naval units, T4 units, superweapons, i assume proper single player campaign (never played though) - in many ways it felt pretty much compete product, regardless of the fact it was "worse" than SC1, which is more or less matter of subjective opinion. Meanwhile Ashes was at its release barebone game and some things are still missing (like navy). You said that much yourself and why it is that way (budget reasons).
These are IMO objective and valid reasons why not to buy Ashes, to someone, who liked SupCom, beyond the fact its named differently.
I give you though, if it was named the same, there would no doubt be people, who would turn blind eye on all its shortcomings and buy anyway based on the name (and be dissapointed as in case with SC2). The question is, would there be enough of them to return the initial investment on buying the IP? Obviously i have no way to know. I just think its not that clear cut that it is always worth it. Maybe with SupCom it would, but i have my doubts about Star Control in this regard.
So in other words SupCom 2 sold more than Ashes to this point, right? You assume its because the brand, and its surely to certain extent true, but you need to consider other reasons, why its not as successful.With SupCom 2, the fans of the original game expected more of the same. That did not happen for various reasons.Ashes, on other hand, was in its beginning:- more compared to Total Annihilation that SupCom- lacked strategic zoom, which is SupCom´s major feature, and even though you think average SC:FA fan my prefer Escalation over SC2 now, that might not have been true with vanilla game- SupCom2 was pretty much full feature game at its release, having 3 factions, naval units, T4 units, superweapons, i assume proper single player campaign (never played though) - in many ways it felt pretty much compete product, regardless of the fact it was "worse" than SC1, which is more or less matter of subjective opinion. Meanwhile Ashes was at its release barebone game and some things are still missing (like navy). You said that much yourself and why it is that way (budget reasons).These are IMO objective and valid reasons why not to buy Ashes, to someone, who liked SupCom, beyond the fact its named differently.I give you though, if it was named the same, there would no doubt be people, who would turn blind eye on all its shortcomings and buy anyway based on the name (and be dissapointed as in case with SC2). The question is, would there be enough of them to return the initial investment on buying the IP? Obviously i have no way to know. I just think its not that clear cut that it is always worth it. Maybe with SupCom it would, but i have my doubts about Star Control in this regard.
Timmaigh, just out of curiosity... between yourself and Brad, the CEO of a software company, who do you think knows more about this subject? It feels surreal sitting here reading posts where you argue with Brad over whether or not a trademark has value from identifying the software product to the public.
I don't even think your opinion reflects commonsense, that of course a "brand" name has value. If the Star Control mark has no value, why did Paul and Fred bother using the mark without license...? Do you get it now?
I think the distinction he's trying to make is that there's a difference in design of the games that may have contributed to the difference in sales. Maybe that's true, who knows, those styles of games don't appeal to me and Brad is a lot closer to the numbers. It seems like you clearly have a beef with the design of AoS, but Brad is 100% correct that the brand/trademark holds a lot of value because people expect a certain style of product associated with that brand. A certain level of quality or design that they liked and draws them to games under the same brand/trademark.
Kind of like my example of Sword of the Stars. It had a strong brand value after the first game because a lot of people recognized the quality of the game and liked it a lot. That strong brand value drew them to the 2nd game, which was garbage. If they had called the second game "Alien Space Smash" instead with the exact same underlying game, they wouldn't have sold nearly as many units as they probably did.
For Star Control, the trademark has a high value to those that are interested in Star Control. Calling it something else wouldn't have the same draw, plain and simple. There are a lot of expectations as to the experience the player expects to receive when you call a game "Star Control". That identification to that trademark has a lot of value to those people who played it back in the day. For new people, they can go back and look at the old games and say "hey, that style of game play appeals to me" and it has value to them as well because they can play those old games if they so choose to help hook them into the new game.
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