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The rights for Star Control have historically been seen as follows: • Reiche and Ford own the entire copyright on Star Control I and II, including code, story,
by anjbe 8y ago
The rights for Star Control have historically been seen as follows:
• Reiche and Ford own the entire copyright on Star Control I and II, including code, story, universe, etc.
• Reiche and Ford own copyright in the characters reused in Star Control III, but Accolade owned the code and all characters/concepts new to the SC3 universe. (Accolade had to get permission from Reiche and Ford to use their characters in this game.)
• The name/trademark Star Control has always been owned by Accolade.
• Distribution rights and royalties for SC1 and SC2 were granted to Accolade for a fixed period of time, or until a fixed period went by with no sales, or until Accolade ever went bankrupt.
All this was written down in a contract between Reiche/Ford and Accolade decades ago; the original document is readable in the court filings.
All three of the termination conditions above have since occurred, so Reiche and Ford claim—correctly, in my layman’s opinion—that the distribution rights for SC1 and SC2 (except for the name) reverted to them years ago.
When Atari tried to sell SC1, SC2, and SC3 on GOG in 2011, Reiche and Ford disputed it. Both sides agreed to split revenues equally, and the game went back up on GOG (see the email chain in https://www.dogarandkazon.com/blog/2018/2/27/report-from-planet-surface https://www.dogarandkazon.com/blog/2018/2/27/report-from-pla...).
But when Stardock tried the same thing on Steam in 2017, relations soured dramatically, leading to a Stardock lawsuit claiming Reiche and Ford hold no rights and were not the creators, and DMCA takedowns from Reiche and Ford.
- Benjamin_Dobell 8y agoAfter watching that video on the court ruling re: DMCA I agree with you that it's pretty clear Stardock are in the wrong here. In my comment above I just wanted to point out it's possible to own IP and distribution rights a particular media release, without necessarily owning franchise IP and future distribution rights. However, it seems that while Stardock supposedly thought they bought the Star Control (lore) franchise/IP from Atari/Accolade; that's simply not the case as Atari never owned the franchise, just Star Dock 3 additions to the franchise and the trademark.
- ninjin 8y agoI would have been inclined to give the same charitable interpretation, but then I stumbled upon this Arstechnica article [1] from the time of the sale with a quoted statement from the Stardock CEO Brad Wardell: “We won't be making any changes to the existing Star Control games. And Atari doesn't actually own the copyright on Star Control 1/2 so it's not like one could make a Star Control 2 HD or what have you without a license from Paul Reiche. And even if we did have rights to SC 1/2 I wouldn't touch them without his blessing.” [1]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/07/stardock-acquires-star-control-rights-in-fire-sale-plans-reboot/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/07/stardock-acquires-sta... I simply do not know how the interpret the above quote in any other way than that Stardock was aware that at least some of the rights were retained by Paul Reiche III at the time of, or immediately following, the purchase from Atari.