In that regard, Brad is just a contractor on Star Control: Origins and it was created by the Tooth Fairy.
Does DLC ever sell as much as the original game? In board games, expansions usually do around 10-15% of original sales. No idea if that’s also the case with games, where DLC is often cheaper and easier to get. But yeah, this doesn’t bode well for Stardock. Fortunately.
Exactly.
I have no idea if the lawsuit had an appreciable effect on the game’s performance. The game itself wasn’t exactly stellar, so I have my doubts.
And hopefully this sets an example and other people will be dissuaded from this kind of behaviour!
BTW, in that thread on Steam, Brad claims F&P are suing GOG and Steam using the GoFundMe. This is truly something:
Unfortunately, rather than relying on the legal system to resolve this, they have chosen to bypass it by issuing vague DMCA take-down notices to Steam and GOG (who, btw, Reiche and Ford are suing using GoFundMe money).
He also continues to play the role of copyright lawyer in that thread. Utterly brazen.
Unless they want to be equally liable (in a case that has enough merits to not be dismissed), they have to. And Stardock can reinstate it by claiming full liability.
Sure, that’s the law. I guess I would expect that for something like this, Valve would let Stardock counter-claim before the game actually went down. Maybe it’s a simple toggle on the back end and not really a big deal logistically.
It’s interesting that
- Players who already have the game can continue to play it
- DLC is apparently still under development, though they’ll need another sales venue
- All GOG/Valve do is handle sales & delivery
Yet people have to be laid off due to the DMCA claim. What needs did they fulfill that are suddenly rendered useless by an easily-countered DMCA claim? Development hasn’t stopped and the playerbase still exists. Sure, it’s temporarily unable to grow via GOG and Steam, but that growth is completely automated by those two companies and requires no manpower commitment from Stardock.
They need one person with a Steam or GOG developer account to upload game files, patches, etc. That person may have been fired. Unless Brad is taking on this role while SD is between projects.
I hope that “some men and women” have greater responsibility than uploading files for a single game.
There’s a lot to be sad about in this whole situation. I have to admit that I never really imagined that we’d get a sequel to Star Control 2 that really captured the magic no matter who was involved. But this legal battle around an apparently mediocre game is pretty much the worst ending I could imagine.
LOL.
I’m not sure what people are thinking here, but there’s nobody posting on this forum (or working at Stardock, or working at a lot of other places) that couldn’t handle this function. And it’s something that can easily be passed around.
Given the disappointing sales of Origins, one imagines the DLC team wasn’t exactly in the most secure position to begin with.
Also
Narrator voice: Issuing a DMCA claim in fact relied on the legal system.
If you’re Valve, it’s much safer to do what the current filing tells you to do and de-list the game for now. There’s no advantage to delaying or disobeying.
I think that developer/player trust of Steam could be affected. I also think companies are able to strategically speed and slow parts of the takedown process to favor one of the parties so long as they do it systemically and legally.
Imagine if Steam became known for blindly accepting strategically timed takedowns, or, heaven forbid, implementing a strike system like Youtube’s, while a competitor worked on a rapid claim/counter-claim portal to make defending against claims easier for publishers. I could see the other platform stealing publisher share and also being referred to more often for purchases by players.
I think you are right that Steam has to comply with this one, even if for a moment, though. And I shouldn’t grind my anti-DMCA sentiments too much. I really don’t like that law, though, so I want companies to find ways to technically comply while reducing a takedown’s ability to disrupt usage/viewing of content.
Steam/Valve are doing exactly whatever their very expensive and DMCA-specialized legal team are telling them to do in any of these situations, and as it has been in the past when they’ve acted in a similar fashion, they’re always going to act on the side of extreme caution to their own bottom line.
To me the lesson to take away is to get any IP/copyright/trademark issues straightened out before you bring your product to the platform, because you know the precedent for how Steam will react if things go adversely.
Last December, P&F filed DMCA claims with Steam and GOG to take down all the classic Star Control games. I think they maybe weren’t down for long or were never taken down. Stardock disputed the claim and the games stayed on sale. I think that was right before Stardock finally sued. Pretty sure that’s why Valve and GOG are now party to the suits.
Then Stardock tried to prevent the same thing tying up Origin’s release, and filed that request for a stay that resulted in some ridicule from the judge a few days ago. So of course P&F are now moving ahead with it, and it’s hard for Valve and GOG to shrug it off, since a judge has said Stardock “brought this on themselves.”
Most of that was probably clear to those of you following the case, but I thought it was worth summarizing as we’re talking about the removal of Origins from Steam and GOG.
Folks are undoubtedly being laid off because leaving Steam and GOG means that whatever sales Stardock would have continued to garner from Origins will be choked down to something like 7% of what it otherwise would have been. Sales of DLC (which still seems to be up on Steam) seem likely to dry up, too, if the main game is in danger of being gone form the platform forever.
The people being let go aren’t the folks involved with putting the game on Steam. They’re probably game developers and support staff at Stardock whom Stardock can no longer afford to pay because they don’t have that revenue stream. (Whether they were already going to lay folks off, who knows, but now that they can blame that on Paul & Fred, they will.)
It’s sad that this legal dispute has left people who undoubtedly worked hard to make a good game for Stardock without a job. Again, it’s probably not the only cause, but there’s no doubt the lawsuits caused at least some folks to stay away, and the DMCA claims will now make it way less likely that new “organic” customers (the folks who know nothing about the game, but might have run across it on storefronts) will find it.
I tend to think the judge has the right perspective on it. Stardock was all over the map on how they approached copyrighted Star Control 2 content in Origins–they seemed to think at one point it would help them legally to add the Arilou and Melnorme into the game. Then they stepped back from that a bit, and dropped the DLC content packs associated with the Arilou from Steam. And did they end up calling the Melnorme something totally different? (There’s also some question about whether infringing content can be recreated in the ship builder and adventure tools. Still a super-sticky segment of the dispute that’s likely making things even hairier.)
Anyway, Stardock danced all over the place with regard to SC2 content in Origins when they could have just assiduously avoided it, like they said they would in the first place. I don’t know that that would have prevented the lawsuits or the DMCA claims, but it seems clear it would have helped them at least slightly in their attempts to protect the release and continued sales of their game.
Watching the thread for the game here on QT3, and seeing SCO show up on some end-of-year lists for excellent writing, it’s clear that SCO is a game worth playing. It’s a shame that the livelihoods of the folks responsible for making that game are going to suffer because of the gambles and (in my estimation) the bluster of their studio management.
I thought I was following this but I missed that this is the second DMCA attempt and how the legal process since then has shaped the stores’ responses to this one. With context I now understand their attempts to prevent have already failed, hence Stardock’s public announcement about the layoffs as a backup tactic. Thank you!
Yeah, if this is how this ends up – with a game not for sale on two big retail platforms and people who worked on it laid off – it really will be a sad outcome. Just seems like there was so much unnecessary brinkmanship going on, and perhaps either bad legal advice being dispensed, or good legal advice being dispensed with.
Personally, I think egos caused some of this. I don’t think anyone involved in this was willing to back down at all- they “knew” they were right- and the concept of compromise just wasn’t there.
One lesson from this: never bother with getting old IP if you aren’t 100% clear on the chain of ownership.
My guess is SCO is going to cost Stardock in the end a lot more than Elemental ever did, and that Brad’s political history has cost him any sympathy from folks who would normally be sympathetic. I see this as more of a business dispute than a moral dispute, but others are seeing this as a bad guy finally getting what’s coming to him- with a reaction similar to seeing the pro-wrestling heel get it even if it’s from another heel.
At this point Stardock should just write off the project entirely- eat the cost and settle. This isn’t worth fighting.
Wow.
My first reaction was actually sympathetic and sad to see things come to this. Then I read the Stardock’s announcement about mere “contractors” having done this foul deed and that small dram of sympathy evaporated. I mean WTF?! It’s like pouring salt on you own wound.
I have to revert to my earlier sentiment; Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
If only someone, perhaps lots of people on various forums in different ways, had seen such folly in this course early on and warned against it.
If only.
I definitely don’t feel any sadness. Stardock tried to steal this stuff after it was evident they didn’t actually own it and the owners and creators didn’t want to be involved with a company that is as toxic as the one who posted all that bs above.
No sadness in any of that for me. If you work there, you know what you were getting into.
I do feel bad for people getting laid off, but that, as it almost always does, falls entirely on the shoulders of bad decisions made by management. Devs don’t work on commission. They got paid their salaries for the work they did.
Trying to blame P&F is pretty pathetic. Using your employees as a shield for your own bad decisions is such a slimeball maneuver. Stardock will lose this case almost entirely on the public statements of the CEO. Yet he will blame everyone but himself.
Just to be clear, I am expressing sadness at the overall situation from the perspective of a fan of the original games who would have loved to have that lightening bottled up for a third time. And instead this all has happened. It’s not an opinion on the most recent events.