7 ms·

Star Control: Origins removed from Steam after DMCA takedown notice

61 points by rkagerer 8y ago

Centigonal 8y ago
The Star Control devs (and the company Toys for Bob) have been very accomodating toward freeware fan projects and ports of their games (see http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ http://sc2.sourceforge.net/) for decades now. The fact that they're litigating this leads me to think Stardock's actions are really egregious.
- xupybd 8y ago
  From my reading of the article. Stardock purchased some rights to the franchise. Then the original authors released a new game in the series. Stardock then sued the original authors as they believe they now own the franchise. The original authors are now counter suing. Edit: after reading https://www.stardock.com/games/starcontrol/article/487690/qa-regarding-star-control-and-paul-and-fred https://www.stardock.com/games/starcontrol/article/487690/qa... it seems Stardock only sued in response to take down notices. Second Edit: after reading https://www.dogarandkazon.com/ https://www.dogarandkazon.com/ I have no idea who sued who first. Both accounts don't seem to agree. Third Edit: Watch the video in cdumler's comment it gives a very good summary from the courts.
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    The takedown notices were entirely legit, given that the original devs retain the copyrights to various bits of content that Stardock used without permission. Stardock's lawsuit, in comparison, seems pretty baseless, given that Stardock only owns the SC trademarks, and Reiche and Ford are obviously avoiding use of those in their game.
    - MikusR 8y ago
      The origins game has no bits of content from original games.
      - extropy 8y ago
        The DLC however does.
        MikusR 8y ago
        It was newer released. And the DMCA claim was against main game and not DLC.
- cdumler 8y ago
  I've been a long time fan of Star Control. I've been watching things for a while. If you check out YouTuber Law on YouTube, you can get a really good take. Not a lawyer, so my layperson's understanding: The creators sold the rights for Star Control's trade mark, marketing and distribution rights on the condition that if the game fails to generate $1,000 in revenue then all rights revert to them. The distributing company eventually stopped selling the game. The creators presumed the rights reverted to them, but never got a declaratory judgement to legally cover that they did. The defunct rights were eventually sold through companies until it wound up with Atari, who sold the trade mark rights to Stardock. Stardock believes that the contract for the copywrite is still in effect; thus, they own the franchise. Stardock wanted to make a game and began doing so. It's he said/she said at this point: Creators says they were in discussions with Stardock who wanted to by rights to the copywrite to make a game, but ultimately the creators said, "No, we want to make a sequel." Stardock says they told the creators they have the rights to make the game and wanted their blessings/input. There appears to be evidence that Stardock's version of events have changed over time and misrepresents events. Whatever the case, Stardock decided to go ahead with the idea that the most the creators could own is the original characters, artwork and music. So, they made a game with the core idea but with alternate versions of the characters, art and music. The DMCA takedown was issued because it appears that Stardock then decided to use some original characters in the game, to which the original creators claim copywrite. The most recent court ruling was less than stellar for Stardock, who used very poor legal arguments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieb1ajwwUFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieb1ajwwUFo
  - Centigonal 8y ago
    Thanks for the succinct explanation & video!
  - smacktoward 8y ago
    Good summary! One small correction/amplification: > Stardock wanted to make a game and began doing so. It's he said/she said at this point The filing in the Leonard French video indicates that the court has access to correspondence between Wardell and Reiche/Ford from this period, in which Wardell explicitly acknowledges Reiche/Ford's claims to the SC1/2 IP and says that he accepts those claims as valid and would not incorporate such IP into his new game without a license from them. (Which Reiche/Ford refused to grant.) Much later on, Stardock released DLC content packs for Star Control: Origins that incorporated some of those very IP elements Wardell acknowledged Reiche/Ford's rights to into that game. Example: - Star Control: Origins Arilou Content Pack: https://steamdb.info/app/899550/ https://steamdb.info/app/899550/ - The Arilou alien race from Star Control and Star Control 2: http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Arilou_Lalee%27lay http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Arilou_Lalee%27lay So if Wardell is saying now that he has never accepted Reiche and Ford's claimed rights to the SC1/2 IP, and the court has written evidence that at one point in the past he absolutely did acknowledge those rights, that would put the dispute outside the "he said/she said" zone.
- mcv 8y ago
  > The fact that they're litigating this leads me to think Stardock's actions are really egregious. I don't see how they are, though. If those emails in Stardock's description of events are genuine, it seems Brad Wardell went out of his way to accommodate and include Paul and Fred in the project as much as possible. Paul and Fred's announcement seems to have come rather unexpectedly and seems to have been timed to coincide with Stardock's release. While I'm generally predisposed to like two indie developers trying to claim their rights back, my impression here is really that Brad and Stardock acted in good faith every step of the way, while Paul and Fred sprang some nasty surprises on him. Though it's entirely possible that Stardock is presenting a skewed version of the history, of course.
  - anjbe 8y ago
    After reading Stardock’s lawsuit (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268/gov.uscourts.cand.320268.51.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268...) and Paul and Fred’s response (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268/gov.uscourts.cand.320268.50.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268...) several months ago, I came to the opposite conclusion. Fred and Paul were initially sued for saying their new game, Ghosts of the Precursors, is a sequel to the game Star Control II from 1992. Which it is. And that it contains the characters from that game. Which it does. They own the copyright on both the game and the characters, and can legally release a sequel if they want; they’re only missing the name. Maybe it would have been wiser for them to call it a sequel to “our unnamed game from 1992.” But getting that wrong shouldn’t warrant a lawsuit, especially one with such misleading claims as Stardock filed. In light of the response Paul and Fred filed, as well as the posts they’ve made on their blog (https://www.dogarandkazon.com/ https://www.dogarandkazon.com/), I interpret the email chains from Stardock differently from “good faith every step of the way”: rather, as Wardell earnestly wishing to create a sequel with the original (copyrighted) characters and universe, being rebuffed, and petulantly claiming not only that his partial rights (trademark + SC3 partial copyright) allow him full control over the Star Control universe (including, e.g., to incorporate Paul and Fred’s characters in DLC for SC:O as he has done) but also ludicrously claiming that they never owned any rights at all, despite contracts to the contrary. I quote from Stardock’s complaint above: > This at least 30-year long misrepresentation and false narrative that Reiche and Ford peddled to Accolade, Atari and to fans of the Classic Star Control Games [that they are the “creators” of Star Control], has resulted in Reiche (who contracted with Accolade and was paid to develop the game despite never having rights to what he purported to license to Accolade) effectively holding hostage whatever copyrighted material that exists in Star Control II and preventing others (including the true authors) from benefiting from it. I tried to come up with a charitable reading of that quote, and simply couldn’t. To say nothing of this other quote from another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18805155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18805155
Maskawanian 8y ago
Given StarDock's bait and switch practices when it comes to their Start10/Object desktop line I have no sympathy for their situation. More detail is that if you try to purchase Start 10 which is an unlimited licence, they will try to upsell you to their other object desktop product which is a 1 year licence without telling you that you will loose access to the original unlimited product you wanted. They then ignore you when you reach out to them about this bait and switch. Never deal with Star Dock.
- xupybd 8y ago
  Maybe, but I think in this case they may have gotten ripped of by Atari, it looks like they sold IP that had expired. Stardock should have done more homework. But I can see how they would feel hard done by in this case.
  - Centigonal 8y ago
    I agree - but if I got sold a car that actually belonged to someone other than the seller, suing the original owner so I could keep driving the car would strike me as an unethical move.
    - xupybd 8y ago
      I'd go so far as to say they might be acting in bad faith by announcing the release of Origins six months after the DCMA notices on GOG sales. So they might claim that the DCMA notices cause injury. I think Stardock thought they were in a water tight position but they were not.
- sleepybrett 8y ago
  wardell seems like quite a scumbag.
  - mcv 8y ago
    He seems to be a genuine fan and gamer with some serious personality issues. I know him from way back on Usenet (probably comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic or something like that) when he was working on Galactic Civilizations, and he was rather insistent that games should be DRM-free, which I really appreciated. He has some other issues on which I strongly agreed with him. But as a CEO, he seems to have trouble with the idea that a) not everybody likes him or what he does, and b) other people have rights too, and they may conflict with what he might prefer to be true. And once he gets on the wrong side of an issue, he tends to double down and make it a bigger problem than it needs to be. I believe there was an issue with sexual harassment that he reacted really badly to, and now this. And probably quite a bit more in between.
Pristina 8y ago
If one can DMCA a launched game, what would stop me from torpedoing a launch of an AAA title during the first few days after launch? I could do millions in damage with a single letter with questionable legal standing.
- haspok 8y ago
  This was not a lonely teenager sitting alone in his room trying to hack an "AAA" title, this was ordered by court, as a legal action as part of an ongoing case that's been going on for some time.
  - anjbe 8y ago
    To be precise, the DMCA takedown wasn’t ordered by a court, but rather, a preliminary injunction (from Stardock) to prohibit such a takedown was rejected by the court. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268/gov.uscourts.cand.320268.102.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268... Gem of a quote from the order: > …The harm Plaintiff complains of is indeed of its own making. Plaintiff had knowledge of Defendants’ 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.
- hnbroseph 8y ago
  i believe the dmca has provisions for handling wrongful filing. you also would be committing a form of fraud.
haspok 8y ago
Stardock has now changed the first sentence of their original announcement on Steam, originally it was like "PR and FF, who were _contracted by_ Accolade to create SC2...". It seems that we are past the initial anger, because it now reads "PR and FF, the _designers on_ the classic DOS game...". If you think the DMCA is an overreaction, just imagine that Stardock legally questions whether PR and FF are the creators of SC2. Really? That nullifies any kind of sympathy one might have had towards them.
- anjbe 8y ago
  That questioning of creatorship has been going on for months, and even more blatantly. In November of 2017, Stardock made an anniversary blog post downplaying Paul and Fred’s involvement as creators of Star Control 2. https://www.stardock.com/games/article/485810/star-control-ii-25th-anniversary---on-the-shoulders-of-giants https://www.stardock.com/games/article/485810/star-control-i... Under normal circumstances, that’s innocuous—nothing more than highlighting all the people involved in the making of a great game. But even then, Greg Johnson of Starflight fame, whom I suspect had heard some of the behind‐the‐scenes goings‐on personally from Paul and Fred at that point, gently stepped in to reaffirm Paul and Fred’s role as primary creators of both the original games and the franchise. https://forums.stardock.net/485810/star-control-ii-25th-anniversary---on-the-shoulders-of-giants#3699873 https://forums.stardock.net/485810/star-control-ii-25th-anni... Not even a month later, Stardock filed a lawsuit against Fred and Paul, containing such incredible allegations as this one: > …Reiche and Ford have over the course of time and up to now have repeatedly held themselves out as the “creators” of Star Control I and Star Control II, especially in their marketing, advertising and promotion of the Ghosts of Precursors Game… However, Reiche or Ford’s advertising that they are the “Creators of Star Control” is false. As Reiche and Ford know, it was Accolade, not them that created Star Control I and Star Control II. …Any authorship that Reiche and Ford may have contributed to the Classic Star Control Games was limited, and it was instead a team of many other authors, including numerous artists, animators, musicians, designers and writers, among others, that collaborated together to develop creatives used in Star Control I and II. >…Contrary to the common public understanding and what they have portrayed to the public, Reiche and Ford may not have created any of the artwork, animation or characters incorporated in the games, or otherwise substantially contributed to the authorship of Star Control I and Star Control II. Reiche and Ford’s advertising themselves as being the “creators” of the Classic Star Control Games is false and misleading, and has been made in an attempt to dishonestly benefit from the goodwill and reputation associated with the STAR CONTROL Mark to which they have never had rights. All of a sudden, what might have been an innocent blog post has an alternate and much more self‐serving interpretation.
eps 8y ago
Ars has a detailed walkthrough the mess leading to this - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/star-control-countersuit-aims-to-invalidate-stardocks-trademarks/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/star-control-cou...
swivelmaster 8y ago
Funny story - Zoey Quinn tweeted about this a few months ago, and then Stardock’s PR guy started trying to argue with her about it (she ignored him), and then I responded to defend PR and FF, whom I’ve worked with and found to be absolutely upstanding. Brad Wardell himself jumped in to argue with me, accused me of libel and said I could be sued, accused me of living out of a car (???) and then muted me and told someone else in the thread that he had blocked me and that I was delusional. So uh... not really making Stardock’s case look better.
- michaelcampbell 8y ago
  > and then I responded to defend PR and FF, who?
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  Zoë Quinn and a connection to an incomprehensible Twitter drama that includes people identified by abbreviations only, who would have thought!
- swivelmaster 8y ago
  Sorry about the abbreviations, they’re Paul Reiche and Fred Ford, the creators of Star Control and founders of Toys for Bob. (And I missed the edit window for my original post... damn.)

61 points by rkagerer 8y ago

The Star Control devs (and the company Toys for Bob) have been very accomodating toward freeware fan projects and ports of their games (see http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ http://sc2.sourceforge.net/) for decades now. The fact that they're litigating this leads me to think Stardock's actions are really egregious.

xupybd 8y ago
From my reading of the article. Stardock purchased some rights to the franchise. Then the original authors released a new game in the series. Stardock then sued the original authors as they believe they now own the franchise. The original authors are now counter suing. Edit: after reading https://www.stardock.com/games/starcontrol/article/487690/qa-regarding-star-control-and-paul-and-fred https://www.stardock.com/games/starcontrol/article/487690/qa... it seems Stardock only sued in response to take down notices. Second Edit: after reading https://www.dogarandkazon.com/ https://www.dogarandkazon.com/ I have no idea who sued who first. Both accounts don't seem to agree. Third Edit: Watch the video in cdumler's comment it gives a very good summary from the courts.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  The takedown notices were entirely legit, given that the original devs retain the copyrights to various bits of content that Stardock used without permission. Stardock's lawsuit, in comparison, seems pretty baseless, given that Stardock only owns the SC trademarks, and Reiche and Ford are obviously avoiding use of those in their game.
  - MikusR 8y ago
    The origins game has no bits of content from original games.
    - extropy 8y ago
      The DLC however does.
      - MikusR 8y ago
        It was newer released. And the DMCA claim was against main game and not DLC.
cdumler 8y ago
I've been a long time fan of Star Control. I've been watching things for a while. If you check out YouTuber Law on YouTube, you can get a really good take. Not a lawyer, so my layperson's understanding: The creators sold the rights for Star Control's trade mark, marketing and distribution rights on the condition that if the game fails to generate $1,000 in revenue then all rights revert to them. The distributing company eventually stopped selling the game. The creators presumed the rights reverted to them, but never got a declaratory judgement to legally cover that they did. The defunct rights were eventually sold through companies until it wound up with Atari, who sold the trade mark rights to Stardock. Stardock believes that the contract for the copywrite is still in effect; thus, they own the franchise. Stardock wanted to make a game and began doing so. It's he said/she said at this point: Creators says they were in discussions with Stardock who wanted to by rights to the copywrite to make a game, but ultimately the creators said, "No, we want to make a sequel." Stardock says they told the creators they have the rights to make the game and wanted their blessings/input. There appears to be evidence that Stardock's version of events have changed over time and misrepresents events. Whatever the case, Stardock decided to go ahead with the idea that the most the creators could own is the original characters, artwork and music. So, they made a game with the core idea but with alternate versions of the characters, art and music. The DMCA takedown was issued because it appears that Stardock then decided to use some original characters in the game, to which the original creators claim copywrite. The most recent court ruling was less than stellar for Stardock, who used very poor legal arguments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieb1ajwwUFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieb1ajwwUFo
- Centigonal 8y ago
  Thanks for the succinct explanation & video!
- smacktoward 8y ago
  Good summary! One small correction/amplification: > Stardock wanted to make a game and began doing so. It's he said/she said at this point The filing in the Leonard French video indicates that the court has access to correspondence between Wardell and Reiche/Ford from this period, in which Wardell explicitly acknowledges Reiche/Ford's claims to the SC1/2 IP and says that he accepts those claims as valid and would not incorporate such IP into his new game without a license from them. (Which Reiche/Ford refused to grant.) Much later on, Stardock released DLC content packs for Star Control: Origins that incorporated some of those very IP elements Wardell acknowledged Reiche/Ford's rights to into that game. Example: - Star Control: Origins Arilou Content Pack: https://steamdb.info/app/899550/ https://steamdb.info/app/899550/ - The Arilou alien race from Star Control and Star Control 2: http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Arilou_Lalee%27lay http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Arilou_Lalee%27lay So if Wardell is saying now that he has never accepted Reiche and Ford's claimed rights to the SC1/2 IP, and the court has written evidence that at one point in the past he absolutely did acknowledge those rights, that would put the dispute outside the "he said/she said" zone.
mcv 8y ago
> The fact that they're litigating this leads me to think Stardock's actions are really egregious. I don't see how they are, though. If those emails in Stardock's description of events are genuine, it seems Brad Wardell went out of his way to accommodate and include Paul and Fred in the project as much as possible. Paul and Fred's announcement seems to have come rather unexpectedly and seems to have been timed to coincide with Stardock's release. While I'm generally predisposed to like two indie developers trying to claim their rights back, my impression here is really that Brad and Stardock acted in good faith every step of the way, while Paul and Fred sprang some nasty surprises on him. Though it's entirely possible that Stardock is presenting a skewed version of the history, of course.
- anjbe 8y ago
  After reading Stardock’s lawsuit (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268/gov.uscourts.cand.320268.51.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268...) and Paul and Fred’s response (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268/gov.uscourts.cand.320268.50.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268...) several months ago, I came to the opposite conclusion. Fred and Paul were initially sued for saying their new game, Ghosts of the Precursors, is a sequel to the game Star Control II from 1992. Which it is. And that it contains the characters from that game. Which it does. They own the copyright on both the game and the characters, and can legally release a sequel if they want; they’re only missing the name. Maybe it would have been wiser for them to call it a sequel to “our unnamed game from 1992.” But getting that wrong shouldn’t warrant a lawsuit, especially one with such misleading claims as Stardock filed. In light of the response Paul and Fred filed, as well as the posts they’ve made on their blog (https://www.dogarandkazon.com/ https://www.dogarandkazon.com/), I interpret the email chains from Stardock differently from “good faith every step of the way”: rather, as Wardell earnestly wishing to create a sequel with the original (copyrighted) characters and universe, being rebuffed, and petulantly claiming not only that his partial rights (trademark + SC3 partial copyright) allow him full control over the Star Control universe (including, e.g., to incorporate Paul and Fred’s characters in DLC for SC:O as he has done) but also ludicrously claiming that they never owned any rights at all, despite contracts to the contrary. I quote from Stardock’s complaint above: > This at least 30-year long misrepresentation and false narrative that Reiche and Ford peddled to Accolade, Atari and to fans of the Classic Star Control Games [that they are the “creators” of Star Control], has resulted in Reiche (who contracted with Accolade and was paid to develop the game despite never having rights to what he purported to license to Accolade) effectively holding hostage whatever copyrighted material that exists in Star Control II and preventing others (including the true authors) from benefiting from it. I tried to come up with a charitable reading of that quote, and simply couldn’t. To say nothing of this other quote from another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18805155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18805155

Maskawanian 8y ago

Given StarDock's bait and switch practices when it comes to their Start10/Object desktop line I have no sympathy for their situation. More detail is that if you try to purchase Start 10 which is an unlimited licence, they will try to upsell you to their other object desktop product which is a 1 year licence without telling you that you will loose access to the original unlimited product you wanted. They then ignore you when you reach out to them about this bait and switch. Never deal with Star Dock.

xupybd 8y ago
Maybe, but I think in this case they may have gotten ripped of by Atari, it looks like they sold IP that had expired. Stardock should have done more homework. But I can see how they would feel hard done by in this case.
- Centigonal 8y ago
  I agree - but if I got sold a car that actually belonged to someone other than the seller, suing the original owner so I could keep driving the car would strike me as an unethical move.
  - xupybd 8y ago
    I'd go so far as to say they might be acting in bad faith by announcing the release of Origins six months after the DCMA notices on GOG sales. So they might claim that the DCMA notices cause injury. I think Stardock thought they were in a water tight position but they were not.
sleepybrett 8y ago
wardell seems like quite a scumbag.
- mcv 8y ago
  He seems to be a genuine fan and gamer with some serious personality issues. I know him from way back on Usenet (probably comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic or something like that) when he was working on Galactic Civilizations, and he was rather insistent that games should be DRM-free, which I really appreciated. He has some other issues on which I strongly agreed with him. But as a CEO, he seems to have trouble with the idea that a) not everybody likes him or what he does, and b) other people have rights too, and they may conflict with what he might prefer to be true. And once he gets on the wrong side of an issue, he tends to double down and make it a bigger problem than it needs to be. I believe there was an issue with sexual harassment that he reacted really badly to, and now this. And probably quite a bit more in between.

Pristina 8y ago

If one can DMCA a launched game, what would stop me from torpedoing a launch of an AAA title during the first few days after launch? I could do millions in damage with a single letter with questionable legal standing.

haspok 8y ago
This was not a lonely teenager sitting alone in his room trying to hack an "AAA" title, this was ordered by court, as a legal action as part of an ongoing case that's been going on for some time.
- anjbe 8y ago
  To be precise, the DMCA takedown wasn’t ordered by a court, but rather, a preliminary injunction (from Stardock) to prohibit such a takedown was rejected by the court. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268/gov.uscourts.cand.320268.102.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268... Gem of a quote from the order: > …The harm Plaintiff complains of is indeed of its own making. Plaintiff had knowledge of Defendants’ 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.
hnbroseph 8y ago
i believe the dmca has provisions for handling wrongful filing. you also would be committing a form of fraud.

haspok 8y ago

Stardock has now changed the first sentence of their original announcement on Steam, originally it was like "PR and FF, who were _contracted by_ Accolade to create SC2...". It seems that we are past the initial anger, because it now reads "PR and FF, the _designers on_ the classic DOS game...". If you think the DMCA is an overreaction, just imagine that Stardock legally questions whether PR and FF are the creators of SC2. Really? That nullifies any kind of sympathy one might have had towards them.

anjbe 8y ago
That questioning of creatorship has been going on for months, and even more blatantly. In November of 2017, Stardock made an anniversary blog post downplaying Paul and Fred’s involvement as creators of Star Control 2. https://www.stardock.com/games/article/485810/star-control-ii-25th-anniversary---on-the-shoulders-of-giants https://www.stardock.com/games/article/485810/star-control-i... Under normal circumstances, that’s innocuous—nothing more than highlighting all the people involved in the making of a great game. But even then, Greg Johnson of Starflight fame, whom I suspect had heard some of the behind‐the‐scenes goings‐on personally from Paul and Fred at that point, gently stepped in to reaffirm Paul and Fred’s role as primary creators of both the original games and the franchise. https://forums.stardock.net/485810/star-control-ii-25th-anniversary---on-the-shoulders-of-giants#3699873 https://forums.stardock.net/485810/star-control-ii-25th-anni... Not even a month later, Stardock filed a lawsuit against Fred and Paul, containing such incredible allegations as this one: > …Reiche and Ford have over the course of time and up to now have repeatedly held themselves out as the “creators” of Star Control I and Star Control II, especially in their marketing, advertising and promotion of the Ghosts of Precursors Game… However, Reiche or Ford’s advertising that they are the “Creators of Star Control” is false. As Reiche and Ford know, it was Accolade, not them that created Star Control I and Star Control II. …Any authorship that Reiche and Ford may have contributed to the Classic Star Control Games was limited, and it was instead a team of many other authors, including numerous artists, animators, musicians, designers and writers, among others, that collaborated together to develop creatives used in Star Control I and II. >…Contrary to the common public understanding and what they have portrayed to the public, Reiche and Ford may not have created any of the artwork, animation or characters incorporated in the games, or otherwise substantially contributed to the authorship of Star Control I and Star Control II. Reiche and Ford’s advertising themselves as being the “creators” of the Classic Star Control Games is false and misleading, and has been made in an attempt to dishonestly benefit from the goodwill and reputation associated with the STAR CONTROL Mark to which they have never had rights. All of a sudden, what might have been an innocent blog post has an alternate and much more self‐serving interpretation.

eps 8y ago

Ars has a detailed walkthrough the mess leading to this - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/star-control-countersuit-aims-to-invalidate-stardocks-trademarks/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/star-control-cou...

swivelmaster 8y ago

Funny story - Zoey Quinn tweeted about this a few months ago, and then Stardock’s PR guy started trying to argue with her about it (she ignored him), and then I responded to defend PR and FF, whom I’ve worked with and found to be absolutely upstanding. Brad Wardell himself jumped in to argue with me, accused me of libel and said I could be sued, accused me of living out of a car (???) and then muted me and told someone else in the thread that he had blocked me and that I was delusional. So uh... not really making Stardock’s case look better.

michaelcampbell 8y ago
> and then I responded to defend PR and FF, who?
tinus_hn 8y ago
Zoë Quinn and a connection to an incomprehensible Twitter drama that includes people identified by abbreviations only, who would have thought!
swivelmaster 8y ago
Sorry about the abbreviations, they’re Paul Reiche and Fred Ford, the creators of Star Control and founders of Toys for Bob. (And I missed the edit window for my original post... damn.)