The Third Doctrinal War -- Stardock, Reiche/Ford, and Star Control

This thread remains probably the best source of factual information and analysis on this IP conflict anywhere on the internet, mostly from Nightgaunt’s hard work.

At least until very recently where it became part of the story.

In an effort to keep this thread open, I’d like to remind folks to try to be cordial. Which I really shouldn’t have to do. You guys all know better.

Also, @Brad_Wardell , you posting in this thread is surprising to me given that your company is one of the parties in the litigation. Until the legal situation is resolved, you should probably let this thread run its course as commentary from the peanut gallery instead of a place to make your case. I’m not laying down any admin decrees or anything, but as a friend and fellow community member, it would be a lot easier for everyone involved – including you – if you recused yourself from the thread. If you’re worried about correcting things said in error, there are enough people here commenting impartially and also flagging posts that you should be covered.

-Tom

Mine is a thoroughly amateur attempt at sorting through things (and a little slapdash on recent developments) but I’m glad there’re others here looking closely at this stuff and sharing their analysis.

I feel a little put to shame by the UQM wiki page, which (if you haven’t seen it) is another great source.

Yeah. When litigants post their legal opinions without benefit of attorney advice it rarely works out all that well for them. Though I’m sure Tom would be charmed to see forum posts cited as evidence in court.

A couple things on that, @tomchick

  1. That other time there was no way I could have known that we were being monitored. You didn’t know we were either so let’s not pretend otherwise.

  2. No one forced you to bail me out of that Turkish prison. The fact is, I’d already developed a taste for the food so don’t fool yourself into thinking you were doing me a favor.

  3. I will follow your advice despite the fact that you are well aware that I have my mission:

  1. I will see you on Sunday. I will bring the Köfte.

I was just taking a bit of my lunchtime to catch up on the lawsuit discussion around the web and someone on reddit pointed out that everything star control related is gone from steam except for the “mowlings” DLC pack (one of the new SC:O aliens that isn’t in SC2).

I just went in and searched and it appears to be true. None of the other DLCs are there, not even SC:O itself comes up in a search.

What this portends who knows.

Origins shows up on gog.com, but not the earlier titles.

The original games not being on GOG isn’t new, those were taken down some months ago if I’m not mistaken, by mutual consent. Do you recall if GOG was ever selling the DLC with all the alien names? I don’t know if that was just on steam.

Yeah, you’re right. The Arilou and Chenjesu DLC packs used to be listed on Steam, but they’re gone now. The fact that the Mowlings are still there there indicates that the other two are gone due to the legal dispute.

Wonder how the dlc even shows up when the game doesn’t.

I’d love to be hopelessly optimistic and think that they were removed on a good faith effort with regards to negotiations of a settlement occurring behind the scenes!

The main game is also delisted.

This might be Valve taking pre-emptive action, Stardock delisting them on their own as to stop willful infrigement or working towards a settlement, a DMCA request by P&F… Too early to tell. Might even be a fuckup by the Stardock employee in charge of the store management or just a change of packages gone awry.

The community hub still exists, and it sounds like Stardock is trying to figure out what happened.

Intern accidentally hit delete instead of update. ;)

Yeah, it is pure speculation as to the reason.

The game is back now, but the dlc isn’t.

Glad to see the main game back. It would be a shame if the game of seeing how close they can skirt the edge of infringement resulted it getting pulled completely. If it did my reaction wouldn’t rise much higher than “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” at this point, but it would still suck.

Filled with regret that I didn’t think of this phrase first.

I really want to be optimistic and hope that the removal of the Alien Name Grab™ DLC was a gesture of good faith and an omen of settlement. Though as on the steam forums the SD rep didn’t seem to be aware of the removal it being intentional on SD’s side doesn’t seem too likely.

Though with the core game itself reappearing if there is an injunction or some type of court order behind the removal at least it’s not the huge escalation that I initially feared when I saw the disappearances from steam. An injunction again the free DLC can’t seriously be considered an escalation of any kind and hardly something to complain about (not that a way won’t be found of course).

Probably depends on how far up the food chain the SD rep is. Community managers (or PR people) are usually not privy to detailed goings on within a particular company, and I fully expect them to be ignorant of what’s being decided among the upper echelons, viz. the lawyers/Brad/P&F. So this doesn’t surprise me.