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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.
And what makes this really sad and petty is that if they can't come to an agreement, NO ONE will make money.
Why can't they just agree on a 50/50 deal and move on?
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.
So they tooked it down?
We can all rest easily in our hice knowing that.
Why should the company that made the new game pay 50 percent to past contributors?
They aren't Disney ;)
If you believed you owned 100% of something why would you give away half?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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
Why is it that anytime I see the name Stardock, I immediately think of subpar software that barely works? Even Ashes of the Singularity, an absurdly hyped game crashes more than a Bethesda title.
Thirty four characters live here.
> Why can't they just agree on a 50/50 deal and move on?
Ego & Greed.
They are a cancer that destroys everything and why we can't have nice things.
I guess they would rather have 100% of nothing instead of 50% of something.
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'
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.
Atari claimed ownership in full to Star Control during their bankruptcy proceedings, while it appears there was a non-transferable license governing the copyright and much of the intellectual property, while Atari fully owned the trademark. The issue in question is that Stardockâ(TM)s new title falls in a legal grey area of a derivative work within a greater work (the series), despite not truly being a copy in part. So, itâ(TM)s the Disney defense.
Thirty four characters live here.
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.
Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III, repeatedly stardock that it owned the SC1/2 copyrights, and would not license them because they wanted to make another game in that universe.
From what I understand, StarDock bought the rights to the name 'Star Control' and 'Star Control II' in one of those asset liquidation sales of the old Accolade IP. Accolade was the publisher of the original Star Control, and had ownership rights to the name. Toys for Bob (the company that Paul & Fred founded), retained all the other rights - which is how the Ur-Quan Masters re-release of Star Control 2 came about. Stardock appears to have believed (incorrectly, IMHO) that name "Star Control" meant the whole game, characters included. When they got wind that TfB was making a sequel to UQM, they sued. IIRC, they may have also used a DMCA request to try to have the Ur Quan Masters taken down at the same time (as I recall, TfB quashed that pretty quickly). IMHO, it looks like StarDock was trying to use the legal system to wrestle ownership of the Star Control characters away from Toys for Bob.
As a final aside, Toys for Bob has been around for quite a while making games for other companies. I see that they've created Spyro, Skylanders, and various licensed titles. Activision appears to have an ownership stake in TfB. StarDock may have just bitten off way more than they can chew. Activision has pretty good lawyers - re:Bnetd and other lawsuits. They're not the Nazgul yet, but they're well on their way. While I hate to see things go to court, it appears that Activision is completely justified stomping the crap out of StarDock. I wonder if they'll be better stewards of StarDock's (gaming) IP than StarDock was?
Full Disclosure: I was a big fan of StarDock's Impulse gaming platform, and dumped about $150 into at one point. At which point, it was sold to GameStop, which promptly ran it into the ground (it took 2 years, but still - they could've been a contender!). Thankfully, I was able to get about 1/3 of the money back as GameStop credit. They may have also thrown a couple of steam keys my way as well. So, yeah, not the biggest fan of StarDock. Oh, and StarDock is the publisher/developer of the Master of Magic clone, War of Magic (Elemental). That didn't go so well for them, either.
Because Ford and Reiche want creative control over the franchise and plan to release thier own game based on the original copyrights.
Also that it started out very respectful and amicable.
The summary is that Stardock really wanted to make a Star Control game with Fred and Paul, and acquired the legal rights to Star Control. They reached out to Fred and Paul.
Fred and Paul wanted to work with them, but were barred by their obligations to be able to commit, and asked for Stardock to at *least* not use the aliens and such verbatim, and Stardock did that.
The tricky part comes when Paul and Fred actually freed up and could actually start working on Star Control, but they didn't line up with Stardock's efforts, so then things just went to hell.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
I think the ownership of the content beyond the brand is fuzzy.
Star Control was owned by Accolade, and didn't go with Paul and Fred. Accolade was able to release Star Control 3 using a different development team as an example of this seeming to be the case, using the brand and the characters. Stardock paid $400k for this.
It's worth reading both https://www.stardock.com/games... and https://www.dogarandkazon.com/ to see both sides.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Paul and Fred's side: https://www.dogarandkazon.com/
Stardock's side:
https://www.stardock.com/games...
Basically, Stardock wanted to do Star Control and paid $400k for what they believed would enable to do it legally from Atari, and reached out to Paul and Fred to get them onboard, but Activision blocked that. Paul and Fred asked they not use the species and such verbatim, though at the time the legal picture is fuzzy (Atari probably sold *all* rights to Star Control 3, which would seem to include most of the species and ships, even if SC1/SC2 picture is fuzzier), so Stardock agreed.
When Paul and Fred *could* do something, things went sour quickly, with Stardock going crazy that they would be *competing* with Paul and Fred rather than cooperating with them.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
When they got wind that TfB was making a sequel to UQM, they sued.
This is literally the opposite of what happened. Stardock reached out to Paul & Fred regarding buying the IP and wanted them to collab on it. They declined. Years later, when Stardock was about to release their Star Control, they again spoke with Paul & Fred. Paul & Fred stated they ALSO had a game they planned to make, to which Stardock said "awesome, let's cross-promote! Here's our intended announcement date" which P&F used to pre-empt Stardock's announcement with their own.
P&F initiated all legal challenges. Due to the nature of Trademarks (defend it or lose it), Stardock had no choice but to counterfile because otherwise they'd lose their trademarks.
Don't take my word for it. Brad Wardell posted their email correspondence. https://www.stardock.com/games...
Ultimately tho the use of the character/story/universe/artwork IP for 1&2 belong to Paul and Fred, 3 was developed under a specific licence from Paul and Fred which not only was for one game only (as part of a three game publishing licence), it expired when as per a clause in the contract royalties stopped which is accepted fact in court filings by both sides. Leaving Accolade/Atari/Stardock owning a specific trademark registration and the code for 3 but with no right to use the characters. Also Stardock were aware of this over a year ago yet continued knowing they had no right to use the story material they were using, which resulted in the owners of the IP correctly filing a DMCA claim. Stardock put themselves into this situation and have no one else to blame, despite the spin they are trying to put on it.
I'd recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?... for an overview of the court's current view of the situation.
Also Stardock are clearly misrepresenting the timings of events in an attempt to save face, given the timing of their posts and claims, compared to the date of record on the court documents.
This is barely different than if I went and developed a star wars game, featuring all the main characters, ships etc. just because i bought a VHS tape 20 years ago and didn't expect (now) Disney to do something about it.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
"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...
Must they refund you? and if not and you do an charge back can that = an full ban of all paided for games?
Who do they really expect to buy a reboot of some shitty DOS game? Who. Cares. Get over yourselves.
Sequel. Reboot implies starting over. I'm definitely buying the one with the proper sequel content over the one with the official sounding name.
Of course, I'm more than above-average in my SC fanaticism. Been a big fan since Archon and StarCon.
No.
Going by the filed court documents (from both sides) they paid for:
1) The Star Control Trademark (ie 'the name', not the copyright on the universe/characters/ships/backstory etc.)
2) The CODE for SC3
3) Possibly (but possibly not, its fuzzy) small parts of the SC3 IP that were original to that game and weren't directly derived from the SC1/2 material such as some artwork and story dialog. The quantity of this likely to be minimal and mostly useless when detached from the bulk of the SC IP.
It is also clear from the court filings that Stardock were aware of this but still went ahead with developing and publishing a game based on IP the don't have rights for.
The licence from the creators to Accolate/Atari expired when Atari didn't pay the required royalties for a number of years so they didn't purchase usable distribution rights for SC3 (without a new licence being agreed) or sufficient IP to base a game on.
Given that Stardock previously decided to try and block Fred and Paul from releasing the source for SC1/2 (which they own 100% of the rights for) under a non commercial use licence, resulting in them having to rename it as Stardock have the trademark, there is no surprise that they are reluctant to licence anything to Stardock.
On a related note. If (and it seems likely given the current filings) the full court case is found in favour of F&P, Stardock will likely have to pay all profit from Origins to F&P, along with damages, withdraw/block all sales (ie. no more downloads on any platform, including their own website) and be significantly out of pocket. They may also have to take steps to disable any existing installs of Origins if the court decides it. They may also be along the way have to forefit the trademark.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
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.
And what makes this really sad and petty is that if they can't come to an agreement, NO ONE will make money.
Honestly I won't pay money for any Star Control that isn't developed by Ford/Reiche, so I'm not really sure that this is a good use of Stardock's time or money. I do not know what they were thinking when they bought the rights, but if they had actually PLAYED star control 3, they'd realize this was damaged goods and that fans of star control 2 are probably very wary of any sequel. There are quite a few game titles in this category: Ultima, Wing Commander, SimCity, etc. The people who made them great have moved on, what remains is utter crap. If those people think they can put the band back together again, I might be inclined to take a risk, but failing that I'm ignoring it. Damaged goods are damaged goods, and EA/Activision/Stardock are purveyors are absolutely awful at everything they do.
What they need is a name change. Instead of Star Control Origins, SCO!
I would say the IP is complicated not fuzzy based on Stardock's behavior. If Stardock believes it owned the IP in question, why did they ask repeated over the course of a year for those IP rights from Ford and Reiche? As for Stardock spending $400K, that's their fault for buying something during a bankruptcy sale that does not have the value they think it had. They should have done their homework.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
Not quite. Ford and Reiche also claim that the 1988 agreement terminated certain rights if they were not paid royalties every year. When Atari put SC1 and SC2 on sale on GOG, they had to work out a new agreement because they had not been paid in more than a decade.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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/
So basically Stardock confused trademark and copyright. Or were hoping that court will confuse. Still even them owning Star Control trademark goes against rationale for trademark, namely to avoid consumer confusion. Any star control title not done by Ford and Reiche would exactly lead to such confusion.
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.
Then you have to ask that question to Stardock as they sued Ford and Reiche first and not the other way around. Ford and Reiche countersued as is their right.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
In this case, Stardock sued Ford and Reiche so they were going to have to spend money on lawyers anyway.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
Not a difficult situation for customers:
DMCA takedowns as for owned IP. As the ownership of the IP is in question why was the DMCA acted upon? It's up to the courts not up to Steam to make the ruling, and it's up to the courts to determine damages as a result of infringement / ban sale.
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.
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.
Stardock never claimed to own the IP. They claimed to own the name.
Think of it like this: "You can make a 'Star Wars' game, but you CANNOT use Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, or any other character, or vehicle, shown in any of the movies, nor can you use the Empire, the Rebellion, or any other named character."
So what do you do? You make Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
StarDock is trying to make Star Control: The Old Republic.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Star Control 3 AFAIK does not use the same source code as either SC1 or 2. It is a wholly different game and much crappier too. It is loosely based on Star Control 2 plot elements and was made under license. The original authors own the copyrights to both the datafiles (story, art) and the source code of the games they made. They only sold the trademark to Accolade, which was later bought by Infogrames and later Hasbro. Or was it the other way around? Then sold the trademark to Stardock.
So no Stardock cannot use any copyrighted parts of the story much like you cannot legally copy the original DOOM wads even if you have a source code license. Except in this case Stardock doesn't even have that just the trademark. Which is basically a name.
Stardock never claimed to own the IP. They claimed to own the name.
No, Stardock clearly is claiming they own the Star Control IP. They are not claiming that they own certain things.
They did this despite knowing Stardock had acquired the Star Control IP in 2013 and knowing before hand our announcement schedule. Their actions created confusion in the market as to the origin of Star Control games which is why we have trademark laws.
Think of it like this: "You can make a 'Star Wars' game, but you CANNOT use Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, or any other character, or vehicle, shown in any of the movies, nor can you use the Empire, the Rebellion, or any other named character."
I don't understand your point. If you make a Star Wars game, you need permission from the copyright holder. Currently that owned is Disney as they purchased the IP from Lucas Arts. Any game and material including characters is subject to what the IP holder (Disney) will allow. If they allow you to create a Star Wars game but no Han that is within their rights.
So what do you do? You make Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Er what? BioWare worked out a licensing deal with Lucas Arts to make the game. The main reason Luke, Leia, Han, and Chebacca are not in SW: TOR is that it happens 3,000 years before their timeline which would make including those characters nearly impossible as the Star Wars universe does not deal with time travel stories.
StarDock is trying to make Star Control: The Old Republic.
Which requires the permission of the IP Holder which appears to be Ford and Reiche
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.