Listen, nobody should feel compelled to get me anything as a prize for being 10000% percent correct, but if you insist, remember that diamonds are always in good taste.
(Stardock isn’t paying a license fee, but effectively what’s going on here is “You don’t mess with our trademark and we won’t mess with your copyright.”)
I refuse to submit to a poll that does not include a Sh1t B0nerz option…
The settlement descriptions from the ars article and P&F’s blog read very much like their initial settlement plus some goodwill gestures. And the descriptions of what happened, if scripted read very much like Paul’s writing.
The biggest difference looks to be that rather than the old games going full public domain they are just going to be sold under a split of revenue like they had previously with Atari.
Wasn’t there something about Stardock getting the original DOS source from Atari and P&F wanting that turned over and made public domain in the complaints? I wonder if that actually existed and what’s happening with that.
I had some internal debate about including it. If I edit the post with the poll does it screw it up or kill existing answers?
Not sure, but you know I was kidding. Such an option would only make such a clever poll more perfect.
I wanted people to make the hard choice. Not give them an easy way out.
From the settlement details it actually sounds like Brad mostly got what he wanted out of the lawsuit. I guess the main difference is that the line between what is considered “Star Control” vs “Ur-Quan Masters” is made more clear so he’ll need to be careful that it doesn’t cross over as infringing.
I can’t say what anyone really wanted of course, and what that was surely changed over time as things got worse, then got better. We did have the text of their original settlement offers and it’s pretty clear whose starting point things ended up closer to.
There was no surrender of copyrights or transfer of cash for alleged damages. Rights were defined where P&F maintained they were and offered to define in their settlement. That the Star Control trademark belongs to Stardock and the copyrights, and more specifically the things defined as the Richie intellectual property in the contracts, belong to Paul. The claim that the Star Control trademark somehow translated to trademarks on every alien name was retracted. I don’t think anyone can dispute that a lot of time and energy could have been saved by negotiating off the original offer of the obvious split of the IP to arrive at this slight modification of it rather than issuing demands for total surrender, damages, and an apology.
Stardock does get some collaboration with the original creators and an endorsement, which was obviously desired at the start even before this was a mess. That is a really nice goodwill concession to help end this thing. If that was all that Brad wanted out of the suit, then that just confirms the massive waste of time the many months since the initial settlement offers were.
It didn’t give Stardock the freedom to use the SC2 lore/aliens, which is what they seemed to really be after. If he wanted this outcome, he could have just accepted the settlement offer from Reiche/ Ford 15 months ago.
This whole thing really proves the old adage “you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar”, with the settlement doing so literally.
I want to root on my purple people in the poll. Vote purple!
Now that the Ur-Quan universe is freed from Star Control, and I’m not even joking here, I’d love to see games set in that universe that are not necessary “Star Control” games. Meaning with the core model of one on one ship combat, or even stories of the earthling’s Star Control organization. The Color Purple could be an economic sim where the Melnorme dominate the the universe through trade and information gathering. It’s about the universe, not the genre, and it would be nice to see all kinds of games set in it. I’m not just saying this because I’m older now and can’t twitch game like I did when SC1&2 came out. I mean that’s part of the reason, but not all of it.
Most of all I want to see a strategy/sim game where you play the Orz extending your *fingers* from *below* to the *in between*, *pretty space* perhaps even *above* and other *shiny* or *smooth* spaces to find new *campers* to have *parties* with. A sort of inter-dimensional lovecraftian god sim where you expand to assimilate, enslave, feed off of, whatever the Orz really do to *campers* in their *parties* and dominate the entire multiverse.
As an amusing footnote, I present the settlement proposal I made in March 2018:
Hah, you fool! You dilly-dallied, and now they’ve cut out the middle man and are producing their own drinks, without needing you at all!
Given the story told about this settlement, I think the next logical step is to appoint Paul Reiche III as a special envoy to the middle east.
“Mr. Abbas, Mr. Netanyahu, before we get into the disputes between your people over land, water, history, and all the aspects of these seemingly intractable conflicts, first I’d like to talk about hummus.”
(I have more jokes, I’ll try not to flood the thread too much)
Please! Let the good humor flow effusively around here! It’s cause to celebrate, like the return of the prodigal son. As gamers, we’re getting what we all wanted from the beginning, which is more silly space adventures and reasons to support some of our favorite developers. While I’m sure the impetus behind the settlement was as much “let’s stop giving all this money to our lawyers” as it was “hey, we both love bee-stuff–let’s be friends!”, I think the story of the settlement is both charming and humane.
If there is a cherry that could be put on top of this, it would be Brad apologizing for some of the threats and insults he hurled along the way, particularly to our friend @Elestan. But for the moment I’m just going to be happy that sanity obtained in the end.
(I do have one question, though. Who has been punking Derek with all that misinformation?)
Though I somewhat loathe to touch on that subject I believe the answer may lie within the question.
Congrats Brad, now you are allowed again to post on Internet!
This agreement is the most common-sense thing, imo, because well, Star Control Origins was released already and… it was just another minor game, it didn’t light up the charts. And chances are that the new game being done by Fred and Paul is going to be the same, it will only make a ripple in a niche community. So a long, expensive (and emotionally draining for both sides!) legal battle isn’t really worth it for these games.
Man, this thread, what a rollercoaster! I will miss it. But I am super happy it got amicable conclusion. Gives me warm and fuzzy feelings. Talented companies should create instead of fight.
If you want to give him the benefit of a doubt, he could have been getting information on the legal side. I don’t mean confidential info necessarily, just info like “neither side is budging, this is going to trial”. So in terms of the lawyers’ demands, they weren’t near a settlement and this was going to court. This wasn’t a settlement brokered by the lawyers, it was Reiche directly reaching out to Brad Wardell and they were able to come to terms. From their own statements it sounds like it was the settlement was done via an end-run around the legal teams (and with their opposition, regarding some of the terms).
I don’t have a ton of experience in these things, but I assume that at least some of the story about the settlement is just PR. It’s easy to blame the lawyers to create a narrative where both sides can try and get some reputation benefits.
Obviously both parties had to be onboard to settle but the fact that the settlement story would make for a pretty good romcom plot is probably not a happy accident.