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'Star Control: Origins' Pulled From Steam And GOG Following DMCA Claim (polygon.com)
PC gaming stores Steam and GOG have took down the video game Star Control: Origins following DMCA takedown notices issued by two designers of the original Star Control games, Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III. Star Control: Origins, a spiritual successor to the old games, is a strategy game about exploring space in an alternate galaxy. From a report: According to Stardock CEO Brad Wardell, those who have already purchased Origins can continue playing it. He added that the DMCA claim will cause his company "to lay off some of the men and women who are assigned to the game." The legal battle over the future of the Star Control franchise dates back to 2013 when Stardock purchased rights to Star Control intellectual property from Atari during a bankruptcy auction. Three years later, in 2016, Stardock revealed that it was developing Star Control: Origins. At the time, Stardock said it was working under the assumption that it had "acquired the rights to Star Control 1/2/3." Court documents reveal that may not be the case, and that Ford and Reiche may instead have conflicting rights to the IP.
Star control 3 sucked.
Also I had no idea SC: Origins was even a thing.
/. done took down any attempts as posting good articles wise
I encourage folk to read up on the legal situation surrounding the game, it's fairly nuanced, with both sides calling out the other for unethical conduct. Certainly there has been a fair bit of back and forth between Stardock and the Ford/Reiche, and clearly they have been unable to reach anything close to an amicable agreement.
I like Stardock games, and I've read good things about star control: origins, although I haven't purchased it (yet). I was a big fan of the originals, and planned on buying the one from the authors too... (Ghosts of the Precursors) when it comes out.
TFA has a pretty good summary though, of why stardock is to blame here, in the judges own words:
âoeThe harm Plaintiff [Stardock] complains of is indeed of its own making,â writes Armstrong. âoePlaintiff had knowledge of Defendantsâ(TM) [Ford and Reicheâ(TM)s] copyright claims from the outset. Despite that knowledge, it developed potentially infringing material without resolution of the IP ownership issues, and then publicized the release of that material during the pendency of this action. It now claims that its investment in Origins and reputation are on the line. Given that Plaintiff largely created the foregoing predicament, the Court is disinclined to extricate Plaintiff from a peril of its own making.â
It was beyond foolish to produce the game without resolving the IP conflicts which were a known issue from day zero. It's not like this copyright action came out of nowhere.
Exactly correct! I have taken down many sites that try to piggy-back on my original content. One must protect their copywrigths or risk loosing them.
I just DMCA the shit out of these trolls! LOL!
--
Rocketman - Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan - William Shatner Trailer
So they tooked it down?
We can all rest easily in our hice knowing that.
Instead of having your douchebag cousin the divorce lawyer look over the documents real quick at Thanksgiving.
It's called a past participle. Please go look it up.
Can we compromise and go with "tooken"?
It was beyond foolish to produce the game without resolving the IP conflicts which were a known issue from day zero.
I guess sometimes it *is* better to ask for permission rather than beg for forgiveness!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Ur-Quan Masters source code was released a decade ago. Accolade/Atari/whatever didn't sue because they obviously understood their agreement was that they owned Star Control 3 and all their own original content, but nothing from SC1 or SC2. (The release was called "The Ur-Quan Masters" because Accolade owned the name.) Stardock essentially bought the name and original content from Star Control 3.
Stardock was careful to develop their own game without SC1 or SC2 content. But then they started planning to release DLC or expansions that would include content from the first two games. I guess this is the result. (Checking SteamDB, there was some DLC called "Melnorme Content Pack" released a day ago. This might have caused it.)
For their part, Fred Ford and Paul Reiche (or their lawyers) started arguing in court that Stardock doesn't even own the name since the trademark likely expired due to disuse. This is quite possible.
Other than the lawsuit, I hear some people actually like the game.
a) Because of this shit (irrespective of blame).
b) See above.
It's now a dead game. Even for the guys who are claiming the IP is theirs.
No, wrong! wrong! wrong!
The past participle of the infinitive verb 'to take' is 'tooked'.
Gawd, everybody knows you add a 'd' at the end of a verb
to build its (I bet you thought I was gonna use "it's" there, didn't u)
past participle. It's usually used with an auxiliary verb such as "done" --
I done tooked your bike, MF'er.
Taken is the name of a 2009 movie staring Liam Neeson. Everybody knows that!
CAP === 'fixation'
I've acquired it and am seeding a torrent right now.
Exactly why do they have to follow an American law?
Stardock could have easily resolved all this and probably kept selling their games, but instead they decided to be total dicks. Now they get what they deserve. It's 100% their own fault. They DMCAed SC1 and SC2, they sued SC's creators first, they claimed that SC's creator's didn't make SC, they refused to settle in a reasonable way, etc. etc.
It was announced, as of January 3, 2014, that Stardock has started a Star Control reboot, but has no estimation of a release date.[13] The Star Control website and forums have also been relaunched.[14]
It seems to me that if there is a public announcement that you are developing a game that specifically mentions your "IP" and you fail to raise any objections for 4 years then you have failed to enforce your copyright. Only raising objections three months after release is such bullshit.
I don't care if the owners are technically entitled under the law, this is still bullshit.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
As your doctor I recommend you lower your sodium intake and check your blood pressure every day.
I'd just like to point out that you can still purchase the game. A DMCA take-down notice was sent to GoG and Steam, both of which just followed the directive of the take-down notice and removed the game from their sites. Stardock still sells the game directly from their website. I'm not an expert so I'm not sure if Stardock is obligated to respect a DMCA notice to their own website. As I understand it, take down notices are sent to third-party sites, informing that third party that there is a copyright conflict on the offending material. It's not really applicable to a first-party site. I believe in order to get Stardock to remove Star Control from their own website, the guys suing them would need to request that the judge prevent sales of Star Control: Origins until the conflict was settled, and then the judge would have to approve that injunction. So far that hasn't happened.
So what happens to the people who already bought the game on Steam? Do I have to now crack it to play it? Fucking tools.
Its the CEOs fault. Read the court papers. You can steal someones creation. What they had for a license to resell and also copyright of the work for SC3 which was done by Accolade with the permission of creators. But the IP for SC is the creators.
Utwig fukwit meh gamze!!
here's a reading of the judges opinion on a request for injunction against DMCA takedown notices https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It is quite apparent that at no point did Stardock believe it had purchased Star Control 1&2 but what they may have thought was that by releasing the Star Control 2 source code as "The Ur-Quan Masters" under GPL that Paul Reiche and Robert Ford had given up any commercial interest and thus the entire game was free to redistribute as they saw fit when in reality the actual graphics, text and audio were all released under Creative Commons Noncommercial Sharealike and the copyrights and trademarks other than the "Star Control" name itself are still held quite tightly by Paul and Robert.
Yup, they've gone and tookened it down.
Who do they really expect to buy a reboot of some shitty DOS game? Who. Cares. Get over yourselves.
I always thought that it was "tookened".
"Stardock will not be bullied by the President of an Activision studio (Reiche) who perhaps thinks these sorts of tactics will force us to give up our rights to our IP or trademarks. You can read the background here:" https://forums.starcontrol.com...
Stardock has been hyping itself as the true successor to Star Control for a few years now. I had personally assumed they had bought out Paul and Fred who had decided not to work on a new game themselves.
Personally while Brad's success story is nice, some of his questionable decisions dating back to the BBS days make one wonder about his ethics or judgement.
Given the Melnorme and other race that are mentioned as DLCs, that seems sufficient to get a DMCA takedown done, given that those two races were wholly owned IP of Paul and Fred's or their company's, not Accolade/Atari. A more interesting line of reasoning might pertain to Ur Quan Masters if the game files were released under the GPL, which might allow remixing of art assets, although that would still not allow commercial resale without data or source code releases, and may not affect creative reinterpretations of the originals. I know for a fact copyrights on likenesses of the Klingons/Romulans/Twi'leks, etc as well as ship designs have been upheld, which is why people doing 3rd party creations off all of them have those big disclaimers on all their work in the hope it remains non-infringing. The whole IP situation is pretty ugly in the World today.
Must they refund you? and if not and you do an charge back can that = an full ban of all paided for games?
De-lurked to express support for designers of some of my favorite games. Hopefully Ghosts of the Precursors will be as good as many of their others.
:
Notably, if Defendants' claims of infringement prove successful, GOG and Valve are already at risk of forfeiting any safe harbor under section 512(c) if they continue to offer Origins. See 17 U.S.C. SS 512(c)(1)(A) (requiring a service provider with actual or red flag knowledge of infringement to act âoeexpeditiously to removeâ the material); see also Ventura Content, 885 F.3d at 604 (to maintain its shield, a service provider "must delete or disable access to known or apparent infringing material, as well as material for which he receives a statutorily compliant takedown notice").
Case 4:17-cv-07025-SBA Document 102 Filed 12/27/18 Page 16 of 20
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp...
What they need is a name change. Instead of Star Control Origins, SCO!
"have took down"
There was a house fire in my area over the holidays. Apparently quite a bad fire, although the people made it out fine.
So one of those people was a former student at a local high school, and well-liked even after she graduated. The school decided to do a fundraiser event and donate clothes and other items the family lost in the fire. The student, in tears, got up in front of the assembled school and the media (it was on TV which is how I saw it) and the former student, an actual graduate says (ahem) "Thank you for helping replace everything that got took"
The "got took" echoed.
Good job, teachers!
Sig for hire.
own the rights to what they created?
These guys _aren't_ Disney. They're they guys who make Star Control. There's a paper trail where Stardock said they wouldn't be using Star Control assets in their games several years ago. They also repeatedly tried to buy the rights for Star Control from the creators and were told no, we want to make our own game.
There's a good reading of it here. I'm not 100% sure if the original creators are in the right (IANAL), but it looks like they are.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
> Stardock said it was working under the assumption that it had "acquired the rights to Star Control 1/2/3."
No they weren't. The documents in the court case, their e-mail history and the advertising material they published clearly shows they knew they didn't have the rights to any IP (in fact, they tried to buy that separately, and failed, then used it anyway). All they bought was the name "Star Control", and even that is dubious, because, by the time they bought it, the previous owned (Atari) had gone bankrupt and failed to maintain its ownership.
GOG is like a distribution program or something by the way.
Origins is a game that has NONE of the aliens from SC1 and SC2. It is just Star Control in name only. Why even bother to call it that? And if Stardock thinks they own SC1 and SC2, why didn't they incorporate all those aliens and try to address the lingering questions from SC2? As it is, Origins could be considered even worse than SC3.
they knew they didn't buy the rights to the alien designs etc all of the content. thats why they tried to license it from toys for bob guys who actually made the stuff.
then they tried to just approriate all of it despite that once the license negotiations came to halt and wanted to add the legacy ships into the game etc. it was really bizarre business move that could only end up in failure as there was precedent that the guys who they bought the name from had to previously license the stuff from the tfb guys - and indeed if they owned it the whole free open source urquan wars star control 2 port/project wouldn't even have been possible!
(basically tfb guys own the rights to the pkunk etc and the story and graphics and all of that and accolade licensed that from them for sc3, this is also how urquan wars is possible to be free).
And yes if stardock wins then the urquan wars becomes illegal/dead project. the whole thing is also why it doesn't have the star control 2 name because that belongs to stardock now(and previous to that to accolade and then "atari"/infrogrames).
tldr: stardock bought the name from atari, tried to license the _content_ from tfb and then just said that they _own_ the content despite previously having said that they don't.
I'm unsure on what tfb based the dmca action on, but probably some clause from their old license deals with accolade/atari.. they haven't been doing pkunk grade stupid things so far so I guess they have some reason(and actual proof etc).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The cases on IP have been ongoing for quite a while and are still being battled in the courts. Why is it then that Steam and GOG responded to the DMCA takedown requests if the ownership of the IP itself is in question?
Earlier this year the DMCA was used to block promotional material. Stardock issued a counter notice but the promotional material was not put back up. This is a clear indication that Steam and GOG are arbitrarily deciding who owns IP despite an ongoing court case about it.
Would this open Steam and GOG up to liability claims if it is found that the Stardock's game actually does not infringe the IP?
I for one am glad I bought the game a few days before this shit hit the fan. The game itself is quite fun and for my limited experience well written. If this sinks the studio after Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III did nothing with the IP for 20 years I'll be pissed.
I bought two Boxen of donuts.
You'll be 'ard pressed to change the way a (p)erson learned t'tawlk guvna!
you see, the sc3 ip was based on sc2 IP and was time limit licensed to accolade/atari. it had an extension possibility, but even that passed like 15 years ago.
Point being they DO NOT HAVE the rights to even sell copies of star control 3.
so they do not own sc3 ip, they own the parts of it that accolade made, which can't be sold without a license from tfb guys. and that such licenses existed should quite clearly explain/prove that stardock didn't buy(or even think they bought, main point!) the rights they now say they have.
stardocks actions are puzzling in the sense that they could bankrupt the company for no benefit at all. like, even if they won they would be ruined in the fan community for claiming urquan wars as theirs when it quite clearly isn't.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
... gives a good (IMHO) overview of the actual text of the ruling denying the DMCA Injunction here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieb1ajwwUFo&t=2s
"Star Fleet Battles" is a board game and doesn't resemble the Star Control video game in any way other than being set in space.
Might as well say that Star Fleet Battles is a rip-off of Spacewar! (which is actually the game that Star Control was inspired by), or Chess.