Thanks for the warning. Purchased it on gog.com a few minutes ago. Hopefully the download will no be cut-off
 
Or they figured Stardock got fleeced into buying something that was never really for sale, so why should they pay another company to buy back what they never really had in the first place

So why didn't P&F tell Stardock that detail you just mentioned? "Sorry Stardock, you just bought a steaming pile of crap?" Brad/Stardock might've been pissed off, but that wouldn't be P&F's fault for being honest. What P&F didn't tell to Stardock when Stardock's offer was given to them was perfectly legal (and well within their rights), but very, very underhanded. It's basically the same as making a predatory loan (and in my line of work, I've seen that way, way too many times to count).

Also, tossing aside the name Star Control (as the only thing of value that Stardock has), but (when a potential competitor/proxy -- namely, Stardock, uses that name for their own product, and it gets some momentum) promoting a game as the sequel to Star Control? That's some real dirty pool, man ...
 
Given that I hold Star Control II up as the greatest game of all time, this whole situation just leaves me feeling quite *frumple* indeed.

I don't know the full details to what led to this particular post; all I knew is that Ford and Reiche own all of the IP, but not the "Star Control" trademark, which is what Stardock/Wardell supposedly bought the rights to. That's why Origins isn't using any of the actual existing lore, despite the title.

Both games could've coexisted nicely, much as Starflight (which had a crowdfunding campaign for a 3rd game outta the blue recently) did with the old Star Control games, but then I saw this counteroffer and immediately lost a lot of respect for Stardock, despite being fans of their Windows utilities like Fences:
https://www.dogarandkazon.com/blog/2018/3/18/strange-settlement-on-an-alien-planet

With that sort of ultimatum, I'm not surprised that they're fighting back this hard to get a game taken down. I'd be pretty pissed-off if someone tried to steal my IP from me like that, and demand that I pay them a huge sum of money while they're at it!

Thanks for the warning. Purchased it on gog.com a few minutes ago. Hopefully the download will no be cut-off
I've bought games on GOG that were eventually delisted from sale before and still had the downloads, so I don't think you'll have to worry if you just bought it.
 
Hahaha getting a chuckle from the Stardock defenders... "Hey I bought this piece of paper for 400k in a bankruptcy sale that says I own your house but I just realized that what I bought was a piece of paper not your actual house so how about you pay me 400k for this piece of paper that claims to be the deed to your house." that is what happened. BTW I got SC:O shortly after release and while the writing isn't as good as the SC2, I accomplished nothing in my life that weekend and had a blast playing it.
 
Hahaha getting a chuckle from the Stardock defenders... "Hey I bought this piece of paper for 400k in a bankruptcy sale that says I own your house but I just realized that what I bought was a piece of paper not your actual house so how about you pay me 400k for this piece of paper that claims to be the deed to your house." that is what happened. BTW I got SC:O shortly after release and while the writing isn't as good as the SC2, I accomplished nothing in my life that weekend and had a blast playing it.

Copyright and IP law are a hell of a lot more complex than owning a house. That's the reason lawsuits like this can be such a huge mess. There is a lot to go through in terms of the contracts, figuring out the EXACT wording, which entities exactly own which thing, what each party is entitled to, which party is allowed to use what without license, etc. Reiche and Ford had YEARS to work out this mess with Atari and yet they didn't bother to do a damn thing until after someone else purchased the rights and announced their own beta. Conveniently, while the two were working on their own revival.
 
Given that I hold Star Control II up as the greatest game of all time, this whole situation just leaves me feeling quite *frumple* indeed.
That is how I feel about Star Flight. Star Control II was one of my old school favorites too. :)

I had been waiting for a fire sale on Steam to pick this one up. Looks like, I may be waiting a while longer unless I go get it off gog.
 
the issue at stake the reason for all of this is when atari went into bankruptcy brad of stardock did not do any research on what exactly they were selling. all he purchased was the name star control nothing else as all the rights for the Ur-Quan universe belonged to PR/FF per their og agreement with accolade. brad wanted to work with PR/FF they said nope kid... thus is the start of brads campaign to bankrupt his company by acting like a piss baby that cant get what he wants. So he is attempting to legally steal everything PR/FF created not realizing they have skylanders money essentially this is one PR/FF will not lose as brad keeps pissing in the judges face.
 
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the issue at stake the reason for all of this is when atari went into bankruptcy brad of stardock did not do any research on what exactly they were selling. all he purchased was the name star control nothing else as all the rights for the Ur-Quan universe belonged to PR/FF per their og agreement with accolade. brad wanted to work with PR/FF they said nope kid... thus is the start of brads campaign to bankrupt his company by acting like a piss baby that cant get what he wants. So he is attempting to legally steal everything PR/FF created not realizing they have skylanders money essentially this is one PR/FF will not lose as brad keeps pissing in the judges face.

At least based on the Tweets, Brad seems to have a good understanding that Stardock owns the right to the Star Control name, but not the aliens, storyline, etc from them. Which is why (according to him, I haven't played the game yet) they made sure the game does not contain those elements. Brad continues to claim that Reiche and Ford have yet to even say which elements of SC: O violate their copyright.

From my persepctive, this seems like one group of assholes suing another group of assholes and a bunch of arm chair lawyers on the internet thinking they know enough to pick which group of assholes is correct.
 
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Copyright should be a flat 14 years, with an option to extend for another 14 years, as originally conceived. Copyright was not intended to provide a perpetual revenue stream to the creator but simply: 1) Provide an incentive (via temporary exclusivity) to create new works, and 2) A way for the artist/originator to help support themselves while they created new works. The current crap is ridiculous, 70 years (after the death of the author!) or up to 120 years (works for hire!) which is driven primarily by Walt Disney and Mickey Farking Mouse. Toss in some musical performers/writers who haven't had a hit for decades but think they should be paid nonetheless for perpetuity for stale work, while thinking their children/grandchildren (who created nothing) should continue to get checks for decades after the creator dies. They usually don't amount to much in the form of checks, but be damn glad kids can perform classical music (most of the time) without the schools being forced to ante up blackmail.

I'm practically to the point of saying burn the whole dang copyright / patent systems down, it's gotten that ridiculous.


Do you have any idea how fucking difficult and expensive it is to innovate and create? Do you think entrepreneurs and artists just pull assets out of their ass from thin air? It takes years, work, money and sacrifice to create new worlds, stories and characters....and then another mountain of work and time to make them profitable.
 
From my persepctive, this seems like one group of assholes suing another group of assholes and a bunch of arm chair lawyers on the internet thinking they know enough to pick which group of assholes is correct.

That seems to be the vibe I am getting as well. By "complying" with the DMCA they can claim whatever "damages" that may be occurring because the take-down. At the same time it hinders what the other side can claim as "damages" as well.

People seem to be missing the point, both groups have lots of money. When you have cash like these dudes have, the good lawyers find you, because regardless if you win or lose the lawyers still get paid. Both legal teams are probably salivating at the cash grab they are going to get from this. Not to mention the PR firms they have working for them as well. Must be nice to have money like that.
 
Then you have no right to open your mouth if you are too lazy to do your research and put the work in. Good day.

No, you missed an option there. This is yet another data point that shows how ludicrous copyright laws are. Reading the whole lawsuit is unnecessary to reach that conclusion. The whole concept needs to be tossed. There's no saving it, the premise is obsolete. It is like trying to save the horse carriage industry after the invention of the automobile... it is an exercise in futility. More problems are being created in attempts to "fix" flaws.
 
No, you missed an option there. This is yet another data point that shows how ludicrous copyright laws are. Reading the whole lawsuit is unnecessary to reach that conclusion. The whole concept needs to be tossed. There's no saving it, the premise is obsolete. It is like trying to save the horse carriage industry after the invention of the automobile... it is an exercise in futility. More problems are being created in attempts to "fix" flaws.

The copyright system is a mess for several reasons, but I'm not sure the complexity of it is one of those reasons. Copyright really isn't as simple as "Person A made this thing so they should own it". There needs to be some level of complexity to it in order for all sides to get the rights they deserve. If someone is paying someone else to create something then it makes no sense for the person being paid to retain all ownership of the thing they were paid to make, but they shouldn't be completely shut out of any ability to further profit on that work. This means there needs to be more complex details involved so both the creator and the entity that hired the creator both get treated accordingly.
 
At least based on the Tweets, Brad seems to have a good understanding that Stardock owns the right to the Star Control name, but not the aliens, storyline, etc from them. Which is why (according to him, I haven't played the game yet) they made sure the game does not contain those elements. Brad continues to claim that Reiche and Ford have yet to even say which elements of SC: O violate their copyright.

From my persepctive, this seems like one group of assholes suing another group of assholes and a bunch of arm chair lawyers on the internet thinking they know enough to pick which group of assholes is correct.

You dont understand how nuts brad is literally he is trying to use the courts and trademark applications to steal everything he does not own in star control 1 & 2 and in the open sourced the Ur-quan masters. then started threatening the open source devs to sign a license with him.

want just how nuts Bradly is look no further than here http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=7182.0
 
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You dont understand how nuts brad is literally he is trying to use the courts and trademark applications to steal everything he does not own in star control 1 & 2 and in the open sourced the Ur-quan masters. then started threatening the open source devs to sign a license with him.

want just how nuts Bradly is look no further than here http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=7182.0

Yikes, the whole thing is a fucking mess. Doesn't really change my "one group of assholes suing another group of assholes" stance though. Both groups are making some seriously wild claims with no proof to back them up and both seem to be using wild claims in an attempt to force the other party to reveal something that will hurt them. However, the complaints really do make it clear why the judge did not grant the injunction and why the denial was not exactly very nice towards Stardock. I'm not entirely convinced that Reiche and Ford are 100% in the right here though. Both groups seem to be acting like children and throwing shit at the proverbial wall to see what will stick, making any claim they can to try and hurt the other party. With how both parties are acting I imagine this won't be the last strongly worded statement we get from the court, especially if one of them is stupid enough to request a summary judgement.
 
I was just now able to buy code on Stardock and install via Steam. Don't know how long that workaround will last.
 
If you get it from gog you can supposedly play offline. I'm not sure if the steam version affords that flexibility.
 
If you get it from gog you can supposedly play offline. I'm not sure if the steam version affords that flexibility.
That's not how it works. People who already got the game doesn't get theirs revoked. There would be hell to pay. There were numerous games that were removed from the steam store over time, but any who had valid keys for them or owned them before can still play it on steam.
 
Do you have any idea how fucking difficult and expensive it is to innovate and create? Do you think entrepreneurs and artists just pull assets out of their ass from thin air? It takes years, work, money and sacrifice to create new worlds, stories and characters....and then another mountain of work and time to make them profitable.

This is why the original system gave you TWENTY EIGHT YEARS. MORE than enough. This extending into perpetuity is nothing more than a gift to giant corporations like Disney - how is continuing to copyright Mickey Mouse benefiting Walt Disney, who's been dead almost as long as I've been alive? 14 years, plus an option for another 14, so no one can steal your first creation and you can benefit from it, while working on something else. I think that's more than enough time. The idea is to stimulate creativity by giving the creator some time to not have to worry about their idea being stolen, not to shut down creativity by making it possible to live the rest of your life, and your children's lives, without ever having to create anything ever again. A system that extends protection well past the creator's life - how is that solving anything? The whole system as it exists today is COMPLETELY broken - and there are a lot of creators who agree.
 
This makes me want to develop a 4x sim in which you navigate the complexities of a universe at war over an IP dispute.
 
Well they can take it down all they want it's up on the torrent sites and everyone knows that shit will always be there :D It's just an average game with a 6/10 score. I mean I torrented it, but I'm just adding to a huge collection of games I don't play. Man I feel out of spite, to post the torrent link to one of those lawyers email and say yeah good luck trying to take this down and post the RARBG link LMAO.

Yeah, it’s just to bad game developers can’t get paid for their work, Isn’t it?
 
This is why the original system gave you TWENTY EIGHT YEARS. MORE than enough. This extending into perpetuity is nothing more than a gift to giant corporations like Disney - how is continuing to copyright Mickey Mouse benefiting Walt Disney, who's been dead almost as long as I've been alive?
Yeah this is kind of where I stand, and hell 28 years IMO is still too long for a field that evolves as rapidly as computers/programming. The idea of of getting infinite rights to an idea just rubs me the wrong way. So what if you were the first one to come up with the idea of doing a hand gesture in VR (yeah I know different thread) science fiction has had that idea for how long now? Everyone has that idea of doing it, who cares if you were the one to figure how to do it... or I should say the one with the resources to develop a platform to do so, I'm sure any number of programmers could do it, they just have no need to do it, and more importantly no reason to spend the thousands needed to copyright/trademark/patent/whatever the idea.

I mean look I get it you don't want your lore tainted by others, but the minute you stop being the one to develop it and simply license it out so others use their creativity then it's no longer your baby. So how long should you get? I think 10 years isn't a horrible place to start, with the ability to get a single extension for another 5-10 years if and only if you are still actively developing said idea/whatever. If you come up with the idea of a "warp drive" and don't have the resources to make it happen, then tough shit you should not be the one who holds back humanity because you were "first to file".
 
A few fun things to note:

Paul & Fred are the guys behing Skylanders (multi-billion dollar game franchise) -- they definitely aren't hurting for cash (even if most of the proceeds goes to their "parent", Activision). These were the guys who had lootboxes well before it became mainstream. I'm almost certain that they, personally, have a lot more capital than Brad/Stardock does.

From what I gather, P&F were underhanded, and essentially figured on using Stardock's resources to get "free advertising/promotion" -- since P&F felt they had the upper hand with their copyrights (vs. Stardock's trademark rights). They deliberately didn't buy back Stardock's trademark right, b/c they wanted Stardock to promote the game, only to "pull the rug under him" by tossing out a few concept art pieces on the website they tossed together for their "Ghosts of the Precursors" game title (I seriously, seriously doubt much work has been done on that proposed game).The key factor is that they didn't tell Stardock just what rights they did own (or believed they owned) ... and that is HUGE ...

Then, they set up a GoFundMe to crowdfund their lawsuit, implying that they badly needed the cash ... sounds like a pity parade appeal to me.

And now, this DMCA ...

I really don't like how P&F have set up this entire affair -- whatever you might think of Brad/Stardock, they seemed to be trying to act in good faith (and goodwill, even), when they offered the trademark back to P&F, at cost.
What P&F did, in response (well before any "defensive/angry" thoughts appeared in Stardock's head) sounds much like a deliberate set-up ...

I donated to the gofundme because I did my research on what was going on. Brad was WAY out of line. Ford and Paul made mistakes but they were not trying to steal and coerce what wasn't theirs. Brad is just a complete loon. Read up on his past history. He's even a racist.
*Edit* sexual harasser.
 
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I donated to the gofundme because I did my research on what was going on. Brad was WAY out of line. Ford and Paul made mistakes but they were not trying to steal and coerce what wasn't theirs. Brad is just a complete loon. Read up on his past history. He's even a racist.
*Edit* sexual harasser.

The complainant withdrew her lawsuit and apologized. https://kotaku.com/stardock-lawsuits-dropped-ex-employee-apologizes-1377925759

By your logic I can go after the SC1/2 devs for being the scummy devs of Skylanders working as an owned subsidiary of scummy Bobby Kotick's Activision.

My main problem with this ruling is that the judge is clearly in denial about how DMCA really works and that the courts do in fact make policy/law every damn day. Laying the blame for DMCA solely on Congress (line 7 pg 15) is hilarious when its the courts who have been enforcing this nonsense, nonsensically for years now. Remember that the DMCA made people criminals for daring to use no-cd keys back in the day to bypass the copyright protection and not have to put a game cd in the drive every time to run the game.

From page 18 of the ruling,

"As a threshold
matter, the Court finds Plaintiff’s evidence in support of its claim of irreparable injury
wanting. Plaintiff’s claim depends on the unsupported assumption that GOG and Valve
will remove Origins upon receipt of a DMCA notice of infringement.
"

Page 15:

"Furthermore, Plaintiff’s claim that third party service providers such as GOG and
Valve act instinctively to remove material claimed to be infringing, regardless of the merits
of the claim, is overstated and without basis
"

Court ruling on injunction: http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/images/f/fa/102_Order.pdf
 
This is why the original system gave you TWENTY EIGHT YEARS. MORE than enough. This extending into perpetuity is nothing more than a gift to giant corporations like Disney - how is continuing to copyright Mickey Mouse benefiting Walt Disney, who's been dead almost as long as I've been alive? 14 years, plus an option for another 14, so no one can steal your first creation and you can benefit from it, while working on something else. I think that's more than enough time. The idea is to stimulate creativity by giving the creator some time to not have to worry about their idea being stolen, not to shut down creativity by making it possible to live the rest of your life, and your children's lives, without ever having to create anything ever again. A system that extends protection well past the creator's life - how is that solving anything? The whole system as it exists today is COMPLETELY broken - and there are a lot of creators who agree.


Nah, I don't agree with this at all. If IP is a continuing source of income, and is properly vetted in reoccuring product, it should be trademarked into perpetuity. Mickey Mouse is the veritable figurehead of the Walt Disney corporation... It's solely attributed to the Walt Disney brand, and any other co-branding derived by legally sound deals between it's parent, and other, companies. It would be an absolute shame were we to get thousands of Mickey Mouse branded, cheese strings, berry flavored tide pods etc. While the mascot is still central to Disney's advertising campaign. Making money off IP that's saturated the common mind, at the literal expense of the IP creator, is a bad thing. Hell, every day at their theme parks, internationally, the Mickey IP is used, ad nauseum.

This portion of the law isn't meant to stifle creativity, no matter how much it may do so, it's in effect to protect viable IP.

Now, whether the two claimants here have any legs to stand on, for an IP that's been almost abandoned for many years, save for some mediocre licencing deals, and third party investments... That's entirely different.
 
Brad recently Tweeted: "Star Control: Origins exists in its own universe with its own setting, story, lore, characters, ships, new alien species. It uses no art, code or other content from the DOS game."

Is Brad misrepresenting how much if any IP protected content he has in Origins?
 
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Nah, I don't agree with this at all. If IP is a continuing source of income, and is properly vetted in reoccuring product, it should be trademarked into perpetuity. Mickey Mouse is the veritable figurehead of the Walt Disney corporation... It's solely attributed to the Walt Disney brand, and any other co-branding derived by legally sound deals between it's parent, and other, companies. It would be an absolute shame were we to get thousands of Mickey Mouse branded, cheese strings, berry flavored tide pods etc. While the mascot is still central to Disney's advertising campaign. Making money off IP that's saturated the common mind, at the literal expense of the IP creator, is a bad thing. Hell, every day at their theme parks, internationally, the Mickey IP is used, ad nauseum.

This portion of the law isn't meant to stifle creativity, no matter how much it may do so, it's in effect to protect viable IP.

Now, whether the two claimants here have any legs to stand on, for an IP that's been almost abandoned for many years, save for some mediocre licencing deals, and third party investments... That's entirely different.
I don't completely agree with your comments regarding Disney, but I understand where you're coming from. Even then, I think Disney has a different situation than most. Very few brands last as long as theirs has, especially since Walt Disney died years ago. So, it's really not fair for every entity to get copyright for a hundred lifetimes just because one entity may actually need it.
 
It would be an absolute shame were we to get thousands of Mickey Mouse branded, cheese strings, berry flavored tide pods etc.

I can only assume you are high as a kite right now. It would be a "absolute shame" ??? Give me a break. It wouldn't be worth a passing "meh".

You do understand, I hope, that the entire reason for copywrite laws extending as long as they have is specifically to prevent legally sanctioned parodies of Mickey Mouse, specifically anything "obscene or pornographic".

All to protect a fake f'in mouse. Good to know I can put at least an online face to that kind of lunacy.

Beyond which, the point of copywrite, as others noted, was to benefit the CREATOR. Not some all powerful multi billion dollar corporation a century later.
 
You dont understand how nuts brad is literally he is trying to use the courts and trademark applications to steal everything he does not own in star control 1 & 2 and in the open sourced the Ur-quan masters. then started threatening the open source devs to sign a license with him.

want just how nuts Bradly is look no further than here http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=7182.0

To be fair it is also nuts how fake Fred and Paul have been as well. This isn't the first time they tried to screw someone out of making a Star Control game. I had a personal friend work on Star Control as a personal project with some other guys after making an agreement with Fred and Paul, only to have them turn the screws on him when they got far enough along to start marketing it and bring in a lot more venture capital.

I can only assume you are high as a kite right now. It would be a "absolute shame" ??? Give me a break. It wouldn't be worth a passing "meh".

You do understand, I hope, that the entire reason for copywrite laws extending as long as they have is specifically to prevent legally sanctioned parodies of Mickey Mouse, specifically anything "obscene or pornographic".

All to protect a fake f'in mouse. Good to know I can put at least an online face to that kind of lunacy.

Beyond which, the point of copywrite, as others noted, was to benefit the CREATOR. Not some all powerful multi billion dollar corporation a century later.

That isn't the purpose of "copyright". The purpose of copyright is to protect works created and/or own by entities, while they are still in production/use, from being blatantly copied and profited on. There is a lot more to it than that as well obviously, but the intent is not to protect "a mouse" but a very specific version of a very specific look. You can make your own mouse all day long, what you can't do is blatantly copy the look of Mickey Mouse and use it to profit off of.

Examples of Mice that don't infringe:

Mighty Mouse
Jerry
Speedy Gonzales
Remy
Rizzo the Rat
Danger Mouse
Pinky and the Brain
etc, etc, etc.
 
If you guys till think Brad is the white knight and F&P are creeps...suggest you read this carefully.

https://www.dogarandkazon.com/blog/2019/1/2/injunction-junction-court-instruction

Stardock blatantly ripped off the Hyperspace component in SC2 for Origins. They did NOT use what they got from Atari--the Star Control 3 hyperspace travel system.
Brad is going to be bankrupt after this.

Only thing that matters now is how long Ghost of the Precursors will take to come out....backing it as soon as it goes into crowdfunding...
 
If you guys till think Brad is the white knight and F&P are creeps...suggest you read this carefully.

https://www.dogarandkazon.com/blog/2019/1/2/injunction-junction-court-instruction

Stardock blatantly ripped off the Hyperspace component in SC2 for Origins. They did NOT use what they got from Atari--the Star Control 3 hyperspace travel system.
Brad is going to be bankrupt after this.

Only thing that matters now is how long Ghost of the Precursors will take to come out....backing it as soon as it goes into crowdfunding...

So we should think Brad is terrible and F&P are great because of what is written in a blog by F&P? Lol, biased much?

Also, I don't think anyone here is claiming Brad is some "white knight" but rather F&P are being blatantly dishonest in their dealings. Stardock may be in a bit of a bind over some of this, but it is clear that F&P also hold much of the blame over the whole affair.
 
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