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

Yeah, no worries man, we’re all friends here.

Ayup. Both said our piece. Happy to leave it there.

I thought your question was in reference to Baldwin. I didn’t know Brad was involved in any way, I mostly tuned it out after the initial ugliness.

It was. Your answer made me consider and add the follow up. Which is good and healthy. I certainly make no judgement on people who enjoy the game. I just felt the need to voice my ethical dilemma. Which made me no new friends and possibly a few more enemies :) But it it is an honest ethical problem for me and my way of handling it was to voice it. Shrug. Again I have no real answers nor clarity on what if any the best course is.

Wait here, I’ll go fetch you a new shovel for that hole you’re intent on digging deeper. :)

You were the one who came up with “space sim cred”, not me. And I’m not sure why a distinction of “sim” or “arcade” has to be made when in fact we who are fans of the genre, regard them as “sims”, regardless of the fidelity or lack thereof of their flight modeling.

You indicated that you would rather see them make FS3 thane me, because you like their space sim cred much better. I pointed out that it was a foolish notion because they made one successful space combat game, and one which was a flop. I’ve made over 12 (in various IP and derivative works) - and didn’t go anywhere. Over a 30 yr span, through trial, error, failure, success, I’ve honed the skills, and built the tech that lets me excel at a singular career path. That being the making of space & planetary combat games.

You see, it’s precisely why Star Citizen has ended up being as a $200M disaster. The creator was gone for decades, knew nothing about how games are made, nor about what gamers expect from the genre, let alone what tech is on hand.

And don’t you think that in ALL the years since FS3, if those guys wanted to keep making space combat games, that they wouldn’t have found a way to do it?

Fortunately, at this point, we have the documents needed to reconstruct what happened back then in fairly high detail:

  1. In July of 2013, Brad bought Atari’s IP assets relating to Star Control. The purchase contract shows that it was made at bankruptcy auction, and included (in §4.05) a clause that basically said that Stardock was a big boy and had to do its own homework on what it was buying, because Atari wasn’t guaranteeing anything.
  2. The IP assignment document from that sale was posted here as Exhibit D, and Exhibit A of that assignment lists what Stardock acquired:
    .1) The “Star Control” trademark,
    .2) The copyright to Star Control 3, and
    .3) A “Star Control Franchise” game list containing only Star Control 3.
  3. On July 22, Brad emailed Paul, asking him for permission to use the universe from Star Control 2, and inviting him to participate in Stardock’s new game.
  4. Paul emailed him back the next day, congratulating him on the purchase, but also stating explicitly that he and Fred owned:
    .1) The copyrights to Star Control I & II,
    .2) The rights to the use of those copyrights in SC3, and
    .3) One side of a recent distribution agreement with GoG for the classic games.
  5. Brad responded with agreement, and over the next month or two, repeatedly asked for a license to their copyright so that he could use the Star Control races to do a prequel.
  6. On September 16, Paul sent Brad an email indicating that he and Fred were not permitted to do outside work, and declining to license their copyrights.
  7. Brad responded by making an offer to sell the Star Control IP to them, which they also declined.

From this evidence, the impressions I have are:

  1. Brad’s primary desire, when he purchased Atari’s Star Control IP, was to do an in-universe prequel to Star Control 1&2. This is very clear from his email.
  2. Brad knew that he would need a copyright license from Paul to use that universe.
  3. However, Brad did not bother to contact Paul for such a license prior to bidding on the trademark. He seems to have taken it for granted that Paul would give him one.
  4. When Paul declined, Brad realized that he was not going to get to do the game he had wanted, and attempted to back out of his purchase of the IP by trying to sell it to Paul.
  5. However, Paul declined that too, leaving Brad stuck with a $300,000 purchase of a trademark, but none of the associated characters or lore except for those from the much-derided Star Control 3.

So, Brad knew what he bought from the beginning, as well as exactly what Paul’s IP claims were, but it seems like he made a careless assumption that screwed him.

There were no surprises until October of 2017, when, upon hearing that Paul and Fred were taking leave from Activision to do a potentially competing sequel, Brad seemed to forget his earlier entreaties for a license, and insisted to them that he already had a “perpetual, world-wide, exclusive license to the characters, setting, and plotline” of Star Control - with the clear implication that said exclusive license gave him the sole power to decide who was permitted to use the universe from the prior games.

And that’s when the hostilities began.

I’m not playing any games Thrag. Read the text. I think that he can have any opinion he wants. He can write whatever he wants about the game on steam. What I think is poor form is his whole I’m just guy who likes games review and this game is not very good. Oh and did I tell you about how I think stardock are a bunch of dicks. But really, I would have said great things about this game if it was any good. But it’s not so don’t buy it because stardock are dicks. He made sure he got his little dig in on release day. That’s my opinion.

Can you please refrain from putting words into my mouth. I have never once in public called anyone names. I disagree with Stardock’s actions – I would never refer to them with a slur. They have their reasons for doing what they do, and I disagree with them strongly. My opinion about the game itself is negative because I don’t think it’s a good game, for reasons explained in the review.

Even if I had liked the game, I would still have mentioned the lawsuit and recommended that people who care about such things avoid the game. Doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t like the game – you know, the one that I owned well before the lawsuit happened, from the company whose entire catalogue, bar The Political Machine, I have on Steam.

I like Stardock, as an entity, fine. I don’t like the lawsuit they’ve filed. I seriously don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to believe that you can do both things and still form an opinion about the game itself, which a lot of people worked hard on to create.

So once again, I ask you to please stop from assigning malicious intent to my review and from putting words into my mouth. This is becoming quite a drag.

Edit: and since it’s been brought up a number of times now, if you want to read the offending review, go here.

I don’t know.

You can have a previous opinion on the IP issue and still want the game to be good and give it a proper go.

I’m playing the game right now, and I’ve realized (so far) I don’t want an old school Star Control game, but a modernized take on it (which this isn’t). I’m finding it dull and a slog to play through at least the first couple of hours. I’m going to give it more time just to see if it evolves, but I fear I just need modern game design wrapped around a structure like this. Gameplay wise it feels as deep as a light mobile game (which is surprising since I expect the opossite from Stardock). The writing is good and I’m enjoying discovering the universe, but the process of doing so feels mind-numbing.

I very clearly have thought Stardock is in the wrong about copyright infrigement for a while now (although P&F are also overeaching in their latest documents claiming their copyright extends to game structure/genre). I understand why Stardock feels compelled to act this way, but I do think they are wrong in this case. Does that invalidate my opinion and experience of the game? Did I approach playing it with any bias? How can I even know?

Out of respect I won’t be writing my opinions on the main game thread here or Steam, but that’s just because people here have a lot of emotional investment of the project working out (which really I hope it does, even if it is not my cup of tea, and even if I would like any possible infrigement removed). But I don’t think the opinion is invalid, or that it necessarily needs as much framing as I’ve used here.

Yes. The “Stardock didn’t know what they were buying” narrative just doesn’t fit the facts. One thing to add to that is that it was publicly known from 2001 that the copyright vs. trademark rights were split. That’s the only reason the game formerly known as SC2 could be released open source but had to be renamed.

The only place where the record shows any misunderstanding is Stardock not realizing that the publishing rights (i.e. sell, distribute, market and promote) rights for SC1/2 had lapsed. But the commercial value is minimal, and those rights would not have had any impact on SC:O.

I apologize if I misperceived the intent behind your review. Based on your previous expressed opinions, the timing of the review and the playtime listing of only 1.4 hours at the time, I thought it was a petty hit piece. If you say otherwise, that’s good enough for me. Your right this is a drag and it’s my fault for interjecting this here. So I apologize for that as well.

Speaking of reviews:

I understand why the first user reviews on Steam would be positive as I am sure those users are hand-picked fanboys who are being allowed to test the game. So the first 20 or so were all positive but now the user review score is 80 and declining. But when it comes to review sites is it normal or suspect that the first 3 reviews released of SCO rated the game in the 90s and virtually every other review has been in the 60s or 70s? I cannot quite remember such an abrupt shift in review scores but perhaps this happens more often than I think.

I think it’s perfectly normal. I wouldn’t read too much (if anything) into it.

Reviewers themselves have different expectations and review for different audiences, and they are allowed to be fans and really like games that are not AAA masterpieces with universal approval. Most likely Stardock made sure to send review codes to outlets they identified as positively predisposed, but that’s standard practice and it would be negligent not to do so.

I’m sure some of the coming reviews will be very positive too (if you don’t mind the old school gameplay it’s a pretty solid offering), but it’s normal for day 1 reviews to edge slightly higher.

Coincidence. All those early reviews have a timestamp of 1700 GMT, so that was clearly the embargo time. There is no suggestion that any of them broke the embargo either. So I’m pretty sure the apparent timing difference comes just from when exactly Metacritic picked the reviews up.

No worries. I can understand your point of view. For what it’s worth, I’m going to continue playing it on and off, to satisfy my own curiosity, though I’ll probably never complete it – nothing against the game as such: I rarely finish games nowadays, and the writing in this is something I’ve bounced off hard, which is a bit of a problem when the main pull is the story!

And like I’ve said before, I’m also keen to see what people will do with the tools, once they’ve all been released. A Star Trek mod would be fun, I think. But then, I think every space game can be improved by being more like Star Trek – see my posts in the Mass Effect: Andromeda thread! ;-)

Would you mind elaborating on this please? What would you want to see in a modernized take of Star Control?

Actually, discussion of the gameplay might be more appropriate for the other thread. And there, Brad is more likely to see and respond (and maybe act) on your feedback.

Just trying to keep us on the topic of the legal dispute here; it seems like we’ve had a bit more diversion than usual lately. :-)

Ok, so game has been out there for a little while. A couple of questions:

Is anyone claiming to have seen that the base game have anything that could be construed as potential infringement of the PF copyrights?

I note that the “Race DLC” is still advertised on Stardock’s site with “Steam Validation”. Are these actually being downloaded? Has anyone seen these?

If I knew exactly I’d make one myself :P. But I’ll try to elaborate:

Star Control for me has two main axes: the adventure/discovery part and the action gameplay. It also was, at release, a pretty good technical achievement (the equivalent of a big production with lots of stuff on it). So it’s basically a medium/high budget space adventure with action moment-to-moment gameplay. Stuff like Mass Effect does not count because they have a less reactive universe (and no ship combat!).

I think (because I thought I wanted something very like this game and maybe now I don’t) what I would want is modernized action gameplay, like Everspace or Rebel Galaxy (come to think of it Rebel Galaxy with these graphics, metastructure and good planetary exploration would be something I think I would be into). Simple enough, but punchy and direct, not a distant, dettached overhead perspective. Same with planetary exploration (although this is harder to figure out, but there are a couple of good vehicular combat games out there).

As it is, Origins (and SC2, tbh) are complex in places I don’t really want them to, and too simple for my current tastes in places where I would like more refined gameplay.

When you leave the Sol system in the main campaign, you run into the Arilou, but they don’t tell you their name. They explain a few things about the Precursors and they say they’ll be back later.