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

Obviously no matter what, this is not an existential threat to them :) But then by the same reasoning Valve could just have ignored the original takedown request as well as a non-issue.

The only reason for Valve to comply with the DMCA request is to get safe harbor, and what they didn’t doesn’t actually seem sufficient to trigger it. So it seems plausible that this isn’t the end of the story for the SC:O DMCA takedown.

Reiche and Ford going after Valve over technicalities of DMCA safe harbor will never happen, you goofballs.

Of course. But remind me again, why did Valve comply with the takedown request again, given they don’t care about safe harbor in this case?

“Not our problem. Y’all figure it out and let us know.”

Star Control Origins is not going to make or break Valve.

Anyway, clearly the solution here is to get rid of copyright completely, and have the state own all property, since at least one of these two parties is failing hard at capitalism.

Since I signed up for twitter I couldn’t help myself but reply. In response to yet another claim that the sc2 comparison chart was a list of things P&F claim to own I posted:

“It’s not a list of things they claim to own. Your lawyers should have explained this to you already. It’s a list of substantial similarities. It includes the SC3 column to show how it is easy to make other choices but SC:O choose to copy SC2 instead.”

The response? Blocked.

Deflector shields are at maximum.

When I opened Twitter this morning, this post from Brad was at the top of my feed.

My eyes rolled so hard they were ejected from my skull.

OMFG! From the timestamp on that one he actually wrote that at almost exactly the same time that he read my statement and blocked my account for it.

I’m going to hurt something if I keep laughing this hard.

Please tell me this won’t impact the schedule for rebel galaxy outlaws.

@peterb and @thrag kind of already said this, but the thing you’re missing is that in this dispute, it’s possible each side to comport themselves respectably and sanely or not. Neither side has been perfect. But the difference between the two sides on HOW they act in the dispute is a big factor in why folks line up on the side of Paul & Fred.

Uh oh, we’re about to have another epic gaming lawsuit on our hands.

Fortunately for tbaldree, PI attorneys usually work on contingency.

Come on, that was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now. I hope you’re kidding. Brad has been involved in this from day one when he started trying to get Paul and Fred involved. At no point did he hand off to his lawyers. He was feeding Qt3 a line of shit so that he didn’t have to defend his decisions here and could be “just one of the guys” while hawking his game.

He’s been dishonest about the lawsuit from the beginning. That false assertion was just another misrepresentation.

It’s OK, @tbaldree already finished the graphics and is working on audio & vocals. Eyes are optional.

He goes back and forth. It’s usually when there’s a legal setback or unpopular action that he distances himself and stands behind the lawyers. When Stardock scores points, he’s quick to stand in front and crow about it.

It’s pretty clear (to me) he was kidding.

Sorry, I thought my sarcasm would be more obvious given my last few posts before it were about how was lying to a lot of us on this very site in direct personal exchanges. Of course I am biased against the guy who was lying to my (fake internet) face trying to sell me his game. It’s silly that some here imagine that I should not consider the history of lies here in deciding my opinion on whether his other comments are honest.

No worries, I had a unwilling suspension of reading comprehension.

The both sides-ism of late was clouding my judgement.

Here’s a fun fact about the case, this is the judge:

Do you think she knows karate? I bet she knows karate.

Observing this myself over the past year flipped my opinion on this matter entirely.

@tbaldree knocked it out of the park with his comparison. That was a fun read.

On the other hand, this ruckus is just making obvious that ip/patent trolling can become a thing in videogames, spelling out clearly how to assert market dominance via legal violence for anybody interested out there.

Even if Torchlight wasn’t a Diablo rip off, it wasn’t, and eventually the case would have been dismissed, I am pretty sure that if a legal papers volley had come out of Activision’s HQ windows there would be a decent chance there would not have been any Torchlight game released.

In any case, whatever the implications of the case are, the guy who played the wizard’s apprentice and tried to create reality, is the one to credit for it. Not those using the US legal system to defend their rights in good faith.

I mentioned it earlier, but it sort of got buried: I’m wondering what this sort of means for a game like War for the Overworld, which hews so closely to Dungeon Keeper, to the point that everyone just regards it as basically Dungeon Keeper 3 (since bloggers and reviewers’ opinions count as evidence). I mean, the title is taken from the subtitle for the proposed DK3, the gameplay is very similar (though they iterate on it quite a bit with e.g. the “veins of evil”), and they even use Richard Ridings (cf. P&F referencing the music).