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:
Along this point, I have noticed what I would consider damage: in the very trailer release link we were sent, on the PCGamer website, it mentions the legal dispute. And everyone knows the best thing to have alongside the news for a trailer of a game is the legal dispute alongside it. :-/
Also, I was looking on the subreddit for this and saw the following post by sfsdfd, which I think also sums up what I worry about myself:
Remember from the two companies who do you think are capable of making a quality game. It would even be less important of being like star control 2 than being good. Lets go with the recent record even if stardock will probably patch this on a monthly basis.
I stand by my point that Reich and his pal will most likely never finish the game, it was a PR move so they wouldn't look like dicks for acting like Copyright Facists, nothing more. So while I agree that SCO will probably be good, it's not even necessary to point that out. The fact is, it will be FINISHED, and Reich's game most likely will NOT be.
Just to be clear, Star Control: Origins does not contain any potentially copyrightable material from SC 1,2 or even 3. We took great pains to reboot it all in the hopes that someday, Paul and Fred would return to continue their story.
We just didn't expect them to show up 5 days before our big day and represent it as the TRUE sequel to Star Control while simultaneously attacking us online.
They are not going to, it is pipe dream I have lived since my days on the UQM forums, and seeing their recent behavior, I don't even want them to. It is likely they are too unbalanced to do it right anyway. SC2 was probably good in spite of them, not because of them. That, or they were much wiser people back then.
^ It's 'cause Accolade kept them in check.
This might be a reasonable position if this email had ever been shared with Stardock (and still hasn't).
I'm not going to try to argue the legal issues here, as Brad's asked me not to, but in the interest of providing useful information, I think those emails are posted on their blog.
What they post on the internet and what is submitted in court are two very different things.
Elestan,
Go ask them if those emails were submittited to the court so the can be verified and reviewed by all all parties.
Go ask them for some tangible evidence of Ghosts being in development. Napkin doodles don't count.
And speaking of the UQM forums, I did used to post there. There was constant anticipation and interviews with Reich and that other guy, and guess what? No announcements ever came. The community leaned on them constantly, and has done so for over 10 years (and I would know because I was on those forums that long ago), and they never did anything. They never wanted to. Fuck their rights as Copyright holders, I hope the judge revokes it.
People shouldn't be allowed to hold a copyright if they NEVER produce anything with it, that harms the consumer and NONE of us should be okay with that.
What people should be allowed to do and what they are legally allowed to do is not necessarily the same thing.
Re: The GoG/Atari Copyright Emails
There's some goal post moving going on here I think. I stated that P&F learned that SC1 and SC2 were being sold on GoG without their permission and without their receiving royalties for the sales, that they contacted GoG about it, who reached out to Atari and then both Atari and GoG's lawyers agreed with P&F's legal position.
GoG and P&F then worked out an agreement wherein the games could continue to be sold on GoG but P&F would receive a cut of the royalties.
This was used as an example to show:
A. The legal case not being as clear cut and as open/shut as it is sometimes being presented as being and that perhaps neither side is 100% correct. Specifically, I questioned the right of Stardock to sell SC1 and SC2 on Steam when lawyers for previous 3rd party companies not connected with the current dispute agreed that those games belonged to P&F.
B. That P&F can be reasonable and work out deals if they feel that what they consider to be owned by them is acknowledged
It was stated that my points would be reasonable if the emails had ever been shown, at which point Elestan pointed out that they are right there for anyone to see posted publicly on P&F's blog.
At which point, now even showing them and posting them publicly is not enough because they could be a pack of malicious lies and half-truths. That's a textbook example of moving the goal posts.
The emails are there and it does not look like anything is missing because if you read them, each one reads as a clear response to the one before it. I suppose it's possible that they're all doctored and the evil P&F just publicly posted a bunch of lies, but that seems less likely given the content of the emails and how the games were then put back up on GoG for sale afterward. And also because I'm guessing that if they were doctored and/or false both GoG and Atari would have a problem with that.
Now, again, I'm open to the possibility that GoG and Atari's lawyers are just both wrong and that Stardock does own those games and has the right to sell them. But at a bare minimum, it sure seems like that is disputable from a legal standpoint given lawyers from other companies agreed with P&F's position.
For now, I have no reason to believe the exhibits presented in both parties' claims aren't genuine. (However, their interpretation of the exhibits is certainly an entirely different thing.) But particularly speaking about the GoG-Atari email thread with P&F, allegations this was faked is far-fetched unless P&F are willing to risk their entire case on a simple phone call by the opposing party to GoG or Atari (or what remains of it today) confirming if these emails took place.
Also calling P&F (or Stardock) liars isn't really contributing anything to the discussion unless you specify exactly why.
I agree completely with every word of this.
As an actual attorney (transactional, corporate law), I do want to point out that you should be extremely wary of any individual interpreting the law and applying it to the facts of this dispute (e.g. Elestan, Talonious), and stating their opinion of which party is in the wrong on any given issue.
There is an awful lot of armchair lawyering going on in the forums. IP law is notoriously one of the most difficult areas of the law to practice. Even the majority of attorneys have little-to-no knowledge of this area of the law. I note that I have not seen a *single* post citing *any* specific provisions from any of the sources of law. You cannot have a credible opinion on which party is at fault if you don't actually know the laws applicable to the issues in dispute. Even if there were numerous people on these forums who have spent their entire legal careers practicing IP and contract law, I'd be very wary of them rendering judgments considering that they also do not have access to the entire body of facts. I actually am an attorney, I have no definitive opinion on the eventual outcome of this dispute. I am suspicious of anyone who claims they do know what the outcome will be, and you should be as well.
In summary, I haven't seen a single post that looks like it was written by an actual lawyer who has any understanding of the applicable laws and I have read a whole lot of application of faulty knowledge of the law to facts that have been hand-selected by each of the respective parties.
I would say that I've been very careful not to do any of that. I am very open and candid that I'm not a lawyer and have no ability whatsoever to judge any facet of this case from a legal standpoint. I'm quite simply not qualified in the slightest to come to any conclusions on who will win what.
The closest I've come to doing so is probably simply pointing out that a similar situation to the sale of SC1 and SC2 on Steam happened in the past and people who were lawyers working for GoG and Atari concluded that P&F own those games. But even then I very carefully concluded the post by stating:
In other words, I pointed out that that part at least had happened before and people who were attorneys for two companies unrelated to the current dispute (and therefore non-biased) had come to the conclusion that P&F owned that part of the whole, but they could be wrong. But at the very least it should make people keep an open mind and not consider this a black and white deal. I presented the GoG email situation as an example that people should NOT assume that one side is 100% right or wrong and that the case is completely clear-cut.
My argument in all my posts has been fairly consistent: stop assuming the other side is acting in bad faith, try and deescalate the situation, and come to an amicable agreement or you risk fracturing the fanbase, which will do as much damage to the brand as anything that has happened to date. Forget about who you think caused what in the past and focus on the part that matters: the future.
This issue is not about who owns star control 1 and 2, but who owns the name star control. Brad has said he doesnt care about 25 year old dos based games. He is planning on giving star control 3 to gnu. He cares about the name.
I would think that if that were true, the games would not still be for sale on Steam wouldn't you think?
He wouldn't be wanting to bundle them with Origin. He wouldn't have bought the trademark to begin with. etc. He would not have spoken so fondly and often about the influence those games had on his life. The games may be old but a lot of the value of the trademark comes from those games not to mention a bunch of fan goodwill. Brad can correct me if I misstate, but I think what he'd say is that those games are not the biggest issue in all of this to him, but I think it's clear he cares about them for reasons either sentimental/personal or financial/legal or both.
I also tend to think it pretty obvious that Stardock owns the name "Star Control" but, again, I could be wrong.
I agree, but it is important to remember that politics, and thus laws, are downstream of culture. We won't change anything by shutting up and taking it.
I think they are less liars and more assholes. I do think that their "game" is a PR bluff, but that's a lot more complicated than a simple lie.
Fair enough. If we're taking the legal side out of it...well, as frustrating as it can be watching great IPs gather dust, I would probably still disagree with your contention from earlier that a copyright should be taken away from someone if they don't use it anymore.
Believe me I know where you're coming from here. As someone, like you, who wanted more Star Control games for many years and was very thrilled when I heard a company like Stardock, who had made games I played and like such as the Galactic Civilization, Sins of a Solar Empire and Offworld Trading Company games, would be the ones making the next Star Control game I was - and am - very excited to see what comes out of it.
Admittedly the current dispute leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth but I try and look on the bright side that it can't last forever and eventually we're getting more Star Control from people who passionately care about that and want to do it justice.
But on the general principle of copyright protection that "if you don't use it, then you lose it"? That I'd have to regretfully and respectfully disagree on...if for no other reason than if that were the case then random no talent hacks - and not a respected company like Stardock - out there could put out Star Control games by the dozens and pollute the value of the name into meaninglessness.
And also...because I don't like the idea of, say, an author deciding that they're done with one series and want to go write or do something else being punished for it by losing ownership of their creations. If you create something wonderful, then you should have the right to decide when it's over no matter if others like it or not.
The games aren't for sale on Steam we took them down to emphasize the point: We don't really care about the 25-year old DOS games.
What Stardock has a huge issue with is someone who knows that a lot of men and women have spent four years of their lives and millions of dollars working on a new Star Control game, knowing a year in advance that we had a big announcement scheduled for Fall 2017 and then deciding to show up 5 days before our announcement to announce that they are making the "true" sequel to Star Control, a trademark they have zero rights to without any evidence they've put any effort into it other than making a post to derail our big day and then, on top of that, having the audacity to make public attacks on us for adding the DOS game to Steam even though it had been on GOG for years as if there is some scenario where even if every claim regarding the old agreement was true that there was no excuse whatseover for them to have handled it this way, especially while having made a huge PR mess through their illegal use.
I wonder what their overlords at Activision would do if Insomniac showed up and announced they were making the "true" sequel to Spyro.
Ah thank you for the correction on the games not being on Steam anymore. I had not looked in a few days. I appreciate the correction.
I also agree that P&F were in the wrong using the name Star Control without your permission and that the timing definitely does look suspicious. Where I part ways with your thinking is in two places:
1. Yes, the games had been on GoG for years, but as I mentioned previously, with their permission. This is the part that I'm a bit lost on. Their contention (right or wrong) is that they own the rights to those games and therefore they cannot be sold on Steam without their permission regardless of whether or not they were previously sold for years on GoG.
Your post appears to me to be implicitly making the argument that you took the games down off of Steam by your choice, which implies that it IS your choice to make. This is essentially claiming ownership of the right to sell those games on Steam - to re-add them at a later time - at your own prerogative. Implicitly, you're basically making the argument that you own those games.
Would you not consider this as wrong as P&F using the phrase "Star Control" without your permission? (From P&F's point of view, their ownership of those games is as obvious as your ownership of the Star Control trademark is to you.)
2. Did not P&F correct their illegal use of your trademark by changing the language around their sequel?
I can certainly understand why you'd be furious about a trademark violation. But, A) why assume bad faith and B ) why not reach out to them, explain your grievance and ask them to make adjustments to their language and be more careful in the future? From an outsider's perspective, their single use of "Star Control" or the phrase "true sequel" just seems a bit...insufficiently damning...for me to assume pure malicious intent. (At least at that time and from what I have seen from publicly available information. I can't speak to their motives now but it wouldn't surprise me if, like you, they were a bit more interested in getting their proverbial pound of flesh than they were before.)
To me looking at that, timing aside - which honestly might be considered a good thing if the language was adjusted and tightened up (a sequel AND an alternative universe reboot? WOWSERS sign me up! <---possible typical fan response. I highly doubt it would be an "either/or" thing where Star Control fans would buy one game but not the other or vice versa. At least I know that I'd buy both.) - P&F's usage of of your trademark looked like just an honest mistake.
Now I know I don't have the full picture. I don't have all the communications back and forth between you and them. So maybe there's something there that makes you firmly believe bad intent and not just a more innocent f*** up. But that also means I have the advantage of some emotional distance from this thing. *I* haven't spent $7M or 4 years of my life making this thing after all. If I had, I would very likely be reacting much stronger.
But just from an outsider's perspective, the trademark infraction seemed relatively benign and something that could have been jointly worked towards fixing and correcting....at least relative to the damage the firestorm of back and forth since has caused. All just IMHO.
Please note that I'd be asking P&F questions in the other direction if they were around to ask. They aren't for the most part. You are. So please don't assume that I'm on their side. I have questions for both sides but your side is the only one around that I can directly ask the questions to and so I do.
And also that I respect that you are around to ask and are taking so much time answering. I don't always agree completely with your answers and I do kind of wish that maybe you could step back from this thing a bit and try a few more rounds of working things out, but I empathize with the position you are in and am casting no judgments.
There are lots of crappy Star Wars games, yet no Star Wars fan would claim that Star Wars is ruined because of it, so your first point, while understandable, has been tested and is quite invalid. In fact, Star Wars is an excellent example of how the owner can themselves ruin the franchise, need I remind you Lucas had FULL CONTROL of the prequels? And Star Wars is not a lone example, just the most famous one.
As to your second point, keep in mind I'm not saying this should happen over, say, a 2 or 5 year period. I'm saying it should happen ONLY if they sit on it for a VERY LONG TIME, like, say, 25 years or so. Maybe 10 or 15 but yeah, it should have to take a while, but allowing them to sit on it forever is harmful.
Also Frogboy - Please, for the love of God, stop assuring us you're not touching SC Canon. I know it's for legal reasons, but being silent is just as legally sound. And I would personally love to think SOMETHING may come of this case where you CAN connect SCO to the cannon universe. The more I hear that, the more I want something horrible to happen to Reich and his manchild pal.
But on the general principle of copyright protection that "if you don't use it, then you lose it"? That I'd have to regretfully and respectfully disagree on...if for no other reason than if that were the case then random no talent hacks - and not a respected company like Stardock - out there could put out Star Control games by the dozens and pollute the value of the name into meaninglessness.And also...because I don't like the idea of, say, an author deciding that they're done with one series and want to go write or do something else being punished for it by losing ownership of their creations. If you create something wonderful, then you should have the right to decide when it's over no matter if others like it or not.
To your first point about Star Wars - I haven't enjoyed Star Wars in a decade or more. I'd argue that my memories of Star Wars would arguably be a lot better if Return of the Jedi had been a permanent ending point. The myriad crap that has come in that franchise since the original trilogy is actually a pretty good argument in the other direction that if the original creator just doesn't have it in them anymore to produce the same magic, then perhaps it's better left alone.
Certainly the movies produced since Disney took over haven't blown me away. Nor is Star Wars the sole argument in the other direction. Godfather 3, for example, was made after a looong hiatus and I'd have been much happier had it not been.
As to your second point, I get what you are saying in the other direction but I just consider it wrong on moral and ethical grounds. I don't consider it harmful either. Say that your favorite author dies and no more books get made in your favorite series for 20 years. Should someone have the right to just decide that they can write more books in the series? How about 10 somebodies? Who gets to decide who now has the rights to write more books in that series? What about that author's estate?
Let's take an example closer to home. Stardock released Sins of a Solar Empire in 2008. That's 10 years ago. Games take a long time to make and while Stardock may be actively working on a sequel, I haven't heard of it. If they haven't started working on one...well, I somehow suspect Brad would strongly object to someone creating and publishing "Sins of a Solar Empire 2". Given how busy Stardock currently is making Star Control Origins and expansions, it could well be 15 years or longer until they make Sins of a Solar Empire 2...if ever.
At the time, they had provided zero evidence that this was the case. You do understand that right?
We had:
a. A contract between Atari and GOG that was transferred to us.
b. An email from Paul that confirms that we have the publishing agreement.
c. It's on GOG being sold.
If they had provided some evidence, any evidence, that showed this wasn't the case sometime in the previous 5 years that would have been a very different discussion.
Why are you assuming this isn't the case? We absolutely did so and tried to work out a coexistence agreement that they walked away from.
And do date, we have officially received nothing whatsoever to corroborate their claims. They've put more up on their blog than they've sent for legal review. They make lots of claims, some that appear, from our viewpoint, to conflict with previous claims they've made in IRC chats, on forums, etc.
I no longer have any interest in their universe. The aliens related to SC1,2,3 will appear in the new Star Control games but they won't have anything to do with the universe they establish. If I had the rights I'd just hand it to the UQM community to do with as they please using the SCO engine and give it out for free.
You couldn't pay me to touch their universe now.
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