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'Star Control: Origins' Pulled From Steam And GOG Following DMCA Claim (polygon.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tussle-continues dept.

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.

20 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A Difficult Situation For Both Sides by ZorinLynx · · Score: 2

    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?

  2. What a mess but... Stardock is to blame here by vux984 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:What a mess but... Stardock is to blame here by TheSunborn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I really don't think Stardock is that much to blame.

      The situation started because "Ford and Reiche" sold the rights to the Star Control trademark(name). And after they had sold that, they announced that that they were creating a successor to Star Control. And they are obviously not allowed to do that.

      The ip situation is odd. Star Dock agree that they don't own the ip itself, but they claim they don't use it(And thus don't need it), because Star Control: Origin contains their own ip, set in the Star Control universe.

      Personally I don't really care that much. Newer been a big fan of Star Control. But I don't understand how anyone could ever imagine that buying/selling the trademark, but not the right to the ip itself was ever going to be anything but a big mess.

      Somehow unrelated: Star Dock had the right to sell the old Star Control games.

    2. Re: What a mess but... Stardock is to blame here by UnknowingFool · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Also Stardock should have paid attention to the situation. Ford and Reiche had a 1988 licensing agreement with Accolade with Accolade owning certain things like the trademark but Ford and Reiche owning other things. Stardock believed it purchased all necessary IP when it bought out Atari's assets (who had purchased Accolade) when Atari when bankrupt. However two things should have alerted Stardock that this claim was tenuous. First was the 2002 open source version of SC2 called The Urquan Masters which was initially released by Ford and Reiche and not opposed by Atari. Second was the 2011 inclusion of Star Control 1 and 2 on the GOG store. As soon as it went on sale, Ford and Reiche objected and contacted Atari who worked out a new licensing agreement with Ford and Reiche.

      The Urquan Masters port is telling because it does not use the Star Control name (trademarked by Accolade) but is essentially the same game as SC2. If Ford and Reiche didn't have IP rights they could not have open sourced it. During the incident with the sale on GOG, Atari all but admitted that it did not own the rights to SC1 or SC2. Thus when Stardock bought Atari's assets later, Stardock could not have bought the Star Control rights.

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    3. Re: What a mess but... Stardock is to blame here by H3lldr0p · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's likely a "speak no evil, hear no evil" situation. They didn't ask and when someone brought it up, Stardock likely replied that they didn't want to know.

      Stardock wanted the brand that was it.

      Maybe it's time we started to look at forcibly retiring trademarked brands when the original company goes under or is bought under duress. All this seems to do is to turn brands into trading cards to be traded among companies. That's not good for anyone other than the wealthy who try to hide behind them.

    4. Re:What a mess but... Stardock is to blame here by vux984 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes, the IP situation is odd, but they clearly knew it was odd AND contentious BEFORE they started writing code so they should have worked it out ahead of time.

      The situation started because "Ford and Reiche" sold the rights to the Star Control trademark(name). And after they had sold that, they announced that that they were creating a successor to Star Control. And they are obviously not allowed to do that.

      Actually they absolutely can. They sold the trademark. Trademarks are funny things, they don't come with any of the copyrights. They are JUST the name. As long as the sequel doesn't use the $NAME, they can use everything else.

      but they claim they don't use it(And thus don't need it), because Star Control: Origin contains their own ip, set in the Star Control universe.

      They could have made a star control style game like starcontrol 3's relationship to starcontrol 1/2, and called it star control because they DO own the name... but they apparently reference the Arilou, and apparently had DLC with the Melnorme in it etc... so they very likely crossed the line into using IP they don't own.

      "Somehow unrelated: Star Dock had the right to sell the old Star Control games."

      In much the same way buying (non-exclusive!!) rights to distribute the Ghostbusters movie doesn't give you copyright on the movie, or any of its songs, or rights to the future of the franchise etc. You have a right to make copies of that one thing and to sell those copies. That's it.

    5. Re:What a mess but... Stardock is to blame here by WorBlux · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III. entered into contract with Accolade, a game company to develop Start control, wherin the creative content of the game would be copyrighted by Ford and Reiche, and accolade would get exclusive rights as long as a minimum royalty was paid. Accolade also recieved rights to the trademark and and marketing materials created for the game. Atari later bought accolade, but did not pay the minimum royalty from 2001-2011, so the publishing rights also reverted to Ford and Reiche. Later F+R, Atarti, and GOG entered a three way agreement to publish SC1/2, which did pass to Startdock for a while.

      Ford and Reiche didn't sell the mark (and never owned it), but trademarks do have fair use exceptions, one of which is the nominative use. For example saying software is compatible with Windows does not violate Microsoft trademark. I don't think the simple truthful description that a game contains material from or is in the same universe as a different game is unfair use of trademarks.

    6. Re:What a mess but... Stardock is to blame here by Junta · · Score: 2

      The tricky part is that Star Control 3 is in the mix, and they seem to have acquired Copyright of *that*, which did not have copyright from Paul and Fred at all.

      So either Star Control 3 was illegally produced and Stardock inherited that situation or Star Control 3 is legal and Stardock can get in that way.

      The real problem started when Stardock went to try to block Paul and Fred, which was just bad form. They didn't relish the thought of competing with the recognized creative force behind the franchise and went scorched earth and well... things went bad.

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    7. Re:What a mess but... Stardock is to blame here by vux984 · · Score: 2

      StarControl 3 ... first have you played it?

      It's very much exactly what stardock would have been allowed to create... its a 'star control' style game, with exploration and planets and top down battles, and its called star control (because they had the trademark), but its not really connected to the previous games at all in any way. I think maybe there's a one sentence in the manual like ... Welcome to starcontrol 3, which takes place 1000 years later in another corner of another galaxy..." and that pretty much ends its connection to the previous games.

      Atari knew all they had was the trademark, and the franchise goodwill that it came with. It wasn't a bad game, but it was no star control 2.

      I suspect Stardock could probably have created a game in the StarControl 3 corner of the universe with the Doog and the rest of the SC3 races but that isn't exactly what people are clamoring for when they want 'moar star control'. But stardock definitely doesn't own the copyright on the original content and original races.

      "The real problem started when Stardock went to try to block Paul and Fred, which was just bad form..."

      Yeah, I agree. Although if Lucas ever tries to do more star war i hope Disney shuts him down. :p That said, I'd prefer it if Disney stopped doing more star wars too.

  3. Re:TAKEN... They've TAKEN in down by sjames · · Score: 2, Funny

    So they tooked it down?

    We can all rest easily in our hice knowing that.

  4. Re:A Difficult Situation For Both Sides by JackieBrown · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why should the company that made the new game pay 50 percent to past contributors?

    They aren't Disney ;)

  5. Re: A Difficult Situation For Both Sides by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  6. Re:TAKEN... They've TAKEN in down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    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'

  7. Re:A Difficult Situation For Both Sides by PincushionMan · · Score: 2

    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.

  8. The article is incorrect. by N_Piper · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  9. Re:A Difficult Situation For Both Sides by Junta · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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  10. Re:A Difficult Situation For Both Sides by Junta · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  11. Re:A Difficult Situation For Both Sides by asdfman2000 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...

  12. Re:A Difficult Situation For Both Sides by mindwhip · · Score: 2

    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.

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  13. Re:Such bullshit. by Dragonslicer · · Score: 2

    The term for that is "laches".

    Laches is slightly different. For example, you could file a copyright infringement lawsuit against someone 20 years after they release a movie, game, etc. that infringes your copyright, and you're still legally entitled to stop them from selling it anymore. Laches limits the monetary damages that you can get to the time period before you found out about the infringing product (plus some reasonable amount of time to fill out all the paperwork to file the lawsuit). The point of laches is to prevent someone from purposely waiting to file a lawsuit until an infringing product becomes popular and/or makes a lot of money just so they can collect more in damages.