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

LOL!! I agree with you on that. Thing is that IP law is so convoluted and complex that the end result - assuming they don’t settle - is probably going to shock all of of us on the outside looking in.

Yeah. That’s why I’ve tried to avoid statements like “so and so is definitely going to lose or win” (although I’m sure I’ve given in to temptation somewhere), because you can point to any high profile IP case in recent years and approximate the outcome with a coin flip.

As stated upthread, I think settlement is the likely outcome. I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s likely soon, for two reasons:

(1) Star Control: Origins is now released. If I try to come up with a good reason to file this hail mary of a lawsuit, the best I can do is “We need a mechanism to prevent SC:O from being DMCA’d during launch week.” The further launch week recedes into the past, the less incentive Brad has to keep pouring money down the hole.

(2) If Stardock loses their motion for preliminary injunction, that’s an indication (though not a promise) that they are not likely to win on the merits of the case. If that happens that’s a pretty strong signal that they had better settle before things get worse. Likewise, if Stardock wins the preliminary injunction, P+F’s lawyers should be appropriately concerned (even more so given that happening despite the disparity in the quality of the filings and arguments).

I dunno, man, Brad’s original settlement offer didn’t leave much room for negotiations. As I said further up, I’d have shredded it upon receipt - with no response whatsoever.

(1) Star Control: Origins is now released. If I try to come up with a good reason to file this hail mary of a lawsuit, the best I can do is “We need a mechanism to prevent SC:O from being DMCA’d during launch week.” The further launch week recedes into the past, the less incentive Brad has to keep pouring money down the hole.

Probably. But also remember that even if a DMCA were filed, the response to get it lifted would be the filing of a lawsuit anyway. But yeah, it would be down for the week or longer that it would take to get a response and file a lawsuit.

(2) If Stardock loses their motion for preliminary injunction, that’s an indication (though not a promise) that they are not likely to win on the merits of the case. If that happens that’s a pretty strong signal that they had better settle before things get worse. Likewise, if they win the preliminary injunction, P+F’s lawyers should be appropriately concerned (even more so given that happening despite the disparity in the quality of the filings and arguments).

I don’t personally believe that they will win it. The bar on the claims is so high that unless they have some piece of paper written in invisible ink and which they have yet to attach, I don’t see how a judge is going to grant it. Injunctions are the most difficult things to get - especially at this stage of hostilities - second only to a motion to dismiss I think.

Someone also posted this on reddit today. The second link is allegedly from the private discord as well.

“If Paul and Fred want to make a new game to continue their story, they are welcome to do so.” - Brad Wardell, 06/29/2018

“There will be no Ghosts of the Precursors. Ever. Any continuations to that story line will have to happen in some other medium.” - Brad Wardell, 05/09/2018

Well, since posting earlier today about Star Control: Origins occupying spot #52 on the Steam’s “Top Sellers” list, it’s managed to slip even further down to spot #69. The game’s only been out since Thursday. No Man’s Sky is still selling better than Origins – and it’s been out since forever.

The problem seems be sorting itself out.

With Star Control: Origins flopping and the Fig campaign for Starflight 3 seemingly going nowhere, I think there’s probably a good reason why games like this went the way of the dodo in the 1990s. It does make me curious what Ghosts of the Precursors might look like (if it ever comes to fruition): if there’s any lesson to be had here, it’s that slavishly copying an older game design is probably not the best way to make an impact with modern audiences.

Are you sure all of these “private Discord” things are real?

Sounds like red meat for the anti-Stardock crowd, may taste too good for them to be true.

Conversely, sounds like someone ain’t happy in that circle.

It’s too early for this to be in discovery, isn’t it? Don’t know if the PF side even asked for such stuff. I suspect they will now.

For popular older games, part of it is a question of scale. Major popular/successful titles in those days sold very many less copies than is expected from Stardock size houses sales today. It’s a tough bet for a big win on something that old, regardless of all this other stuff.

Don’t even get me started on that one. I am already in a thread about it, and have been railing on them on Twitter these past few days. It’s not getting funded, and that pleases me to no end.

There’s a lot more competition, too. I mean, Star Control: Origins isn’t even on the frontpage of Steam anymore – four days later. That’s because of the enormous amount of stuff that gets released on the platform. I don’t envy them in that regard.

Yeah, I know. I’ve been keeping tabs on it. Nothing that I saw in the video or read about the game convinced me to pull out my wallet, though. I mean, I love Starflight more than Star Control, but there’s nothing about the new game that makes me very excited, apart from Greg Johnson being involved. And that alone isn’t enough for me.

No, which is why I used allegedly. In the post that included the screenshot above it was mentioned that someone on the private channel had sent that to him. Not something leaked from discovery. The second one with just the text the poster didn’t provide more context for.

It looks like there was a response from Stardock in that reddit thread that seems to amount to “these things were just said in anger, I didn’t really mean them”.

For the first one we have some provenance. It was sent to the admin of the UQM forums along with screenshots of the email correspondence between the admin and Brad being posted on the same chat. So it at least wasn’t totally random trolling, but someone who could get either access to the original emails or to a chat where those emails were being posted.

For the second, Brad replied and just said that he hadn’t verified whether the transcript had been edited, but seemed to agree that it’s the kind of thing he’s said on occasion:

The excuse really rings weak, and does not in any way absolve him of the blatant dishonesty of the different positions. It reveals that when motivated by anger he lashes out with little control of himself. It shows that his word is only as good as his mood at the moment. So he’s still completely dishonest, but also given to fits of rage.

This is why lawyers tell their clients not to talk about matters under litigation. When you’re the CEO of a company in that position, with the power to file lawsuits, send subpoenas, and get injunctions, what you say has consequences.

Plus, since all of Brad’s communications are currently subject to court Discovery, he had to realize that they could end up in public view eventually, whether or not anyone leaked them.

Yeah, so much fodder for discovery. As we’ve seen public statements from forums have already been used in some of the filings.

If those really are from the discord that was just for founders of the game, even there in that “private” chat to speak so freely under the assumption that nobody will find such statements objectionable and breach the weak confidentiality of the forum is just so foolish.

I would imagine the participants were under NDA, Though typically such NDAs for beta periods end on release. Unless they went out of their way to word the NDA to make it apply forever to what people saw on the discord chat there was no guarantee of it remaining private. I wonder if lifting of the NDA is exactly why these past statements are coming to light now.

I’m reading that now, and yeah, some serious table pounding. Points however for the use of the word “cacophony”. I really enjoyed that bit.

I’ve been thinking part of it is that it would be really hard to live up to the expectations. With the level of abstraction in the graphics back then I think a lot of experience was going on in our own heads, and with
the visual requirements today it would be hard or impossible to match that.

There’s obviously way too many factors to assign the exact impact of the various aspects of the design, production, marketing, and such.

That said, it does seem like spending the months leading up to release personally and individually alienating potential customers who were big fans of the series that they spent a ton of money on wasn’t a total success.

I just sent him this. Read his response.

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1043926435642200065

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, too. I liked these games mainly because of the interactions with the aliens and the story. I couldn’t care less about going down to planet surfaces to scoop up resources to be able to upgrade stuff – just put the interaction with aliens front and centre and tie the rewards to that. I’d be more than happy if the game was a glorified text adventure – just set the budget and the expectations accordingly.

Similarly, instead of forcing me to crawl through hyperspace at a slow pace (since I’m not getting any younger and my time’s limited!), just give me a starmap to set a destination and play a brief animation of my ship in transit. Something like in the old Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Game. Do like Darkstar One, which also featured a starmap, and have the range be limited by your fuel (requiring you to upgrade your ship).

And top-down space combat like this is also not very much to my liking any more. I mentioned in the other thread that I think The Long Journey Home did this style of combat better (thanks to ships firing broadsides), but if you have to have combat, I’d prefer something more along the lines of Starpoint Gemini (i.e. Star Trek: Legacy like capital ship combat with direct control), Starfleet Command or Nexus: The Jupiter Incident (more strategic), or EverSpace (straight up space shooter).

Anyway…