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

[Brad_Wardell]

@Thrag

God I hope you are just confused and will at some point see the light and back down from your attempts to trademark everything and your assumptions about the ill will of P&F and those that support them

I don’t know how to make it more clear. They call themselves the creators and they have every right to. They never held themselves out as sole creators and from the original credits to every public word they have said about he making of the game they have gone out of their way to highlight the contributions of others. They are clearly not the fraudulent glory hounds your lawsuit makes them out to be.

How can you read this and think their contribution is diminished by it?

I don’t think their contribution was diminished by it. Again: while I was not particularly involved in the original complaint I made sure the amended complaint removed the implication that they weren’t instrumental to the game.

As for the ill will of Paul and Fred, I think you should read their suit in full. You don’t get much more into “ill will” than trying to destroy our project that we’ve spent nearly 5 years working on.

@Shuma

You just repeated yourself here. What about your years of experience leading a game studio? You know how games are made.

Yes. And lots of games at that scope are made by two people. Even today. Very often an artist and a programmer.

You can look at the credits for the game and see it was more than just Paul and Fred. You read through the Accolade contract and knew more about Star Control than most, especially as a self-professed superfan.

The Accolade contract was between Accolade and an individual not even a company. If anything, the contract makes it sound like it’s one guy not even two.

It’s just not believable.

You’re not stupid or unobservant and are merely pretending your are on this one point just to not appear self-contradictory or that you previously lied. What you said is possible, sure, but it certainly strains credibility.

I am not sure how to respond to this. Most games of that scope, especially back then, were made by a couple of people. Most games, of that scope, TODAY, are made by just a couple of people.

Super Meat boy: 2 people
Binding of Isaac, 2 people.

The budget for Star Control 2 was $150,000.

So yea, my 25 years of experience in the industry tells me that it would be reasonable to believe that that game could have been done by two people.

We could have made Star Control II with 2 people (i.e. me and an artist).

I’m not even sure what relevance any of this has. I’ve read enough on this topic over the past 4 years to know that many people thought it was basically just Paul and Fred. But finding out it wasn’t Paul and Fred has no relevance to the trademark suit as far as I can tell but I’m not a lawyer.

@Thrag

I mean really now. Diminishing the contributions of the actual copyright holders. Well, I keep quoting to you the words of one of these you contend to be the “actual copyright holders”? He doesn’t seem to think his contribution has been diminished and is in fact giving vast credit to P&F. That and the whole thing about how P&F so often go out of their way to give credit others like in the retrospective or their efforts to make the credits of the UQM project complete.

There’s no contending. He was one of the copyright holders as now admitted by Paul and Fred after 25 years of claiming that they personally owned all the creatives in the game.

We’ll never know what would have happened if Accolade had known that Paul didn’t actually have the copyrights he represented to have. They might very well have approached the individuals themselves to acquire those rights.

@Elestan

Additionally you added even more provocative language accusing P&F of deliberate fraud over their copyright ownership that probably burns up any ground you’d gained on that front.

I assume you mean “you” as in Stardock and not me personally. Like I said earlier, I’ve probably spent less time on this than you have.

I don’t consider the new language provocative. They spent 25 years claiming to own the creatives when in fact they did not and in fact licensed those creatives to Accolade for SC3 and were paid.

But if you’re going to bring a copyright suit into federal court, then you should actually have a copyright. I remain baffled that this case is even a thing.

Now, if you want to talk provocative, I might remind you that their countersuit actually has a fraud cause of action:

I think there is a disconnect or at the very least, a discrepancy in expectations of what lawsuits are. They’re not nice. If lawyers saying mean things about their opponent’s clients is going to cause you discomfort, you might just not want to read them.

@Shuma

Your complaint says that Fred and Paul’s contributions were limited. Fred coded the entire damn game! You know this! There’s no way Star Control gets made without its sole engineer. This is insanity. I can’t believe you and your company made such claims. This is why people are so upset with you right now.

Again: The strike out means it was removed from the complaint:

So no, the amended complaint doesn’t say that.

Anyway, it’s 11pm here. That’s enough for now. I still have this thread muted but I think we’ve covered the main things that you guys wanted covered. Or at least the parts that there seemed to be a misunderstanding on. Obviously, on many other elements, we just won’t agree.