If you see any particularly persuasive arguments or interesting points raised there, feel free to run them by us here. New information or (reasoned) perspective is always welcome.
My problem with the settlement suggested is that the youtube lawyer is working on the basis that the P+F sequel is a serious commercial endeavour, and I don’t think I’ve seen any evidence of that to this point (obviously it might become one, but I thought it was more of a hobby project?)
Without that incentive to control their IP, it would boil down to licensing their IP to Stardock for free because Stardock overpaid for a trademark in a bankruptcy firesale. Which doesn’t seem terribly equitable.
Take out the $400K credit against royalties and I’d probably go for it just to end this mess. Not that I can imagine Brad would agree.
(Also I agree that an injunction against Stardock releasing SC:O would be unwise, partly because of the risks and partly because of the optics). Simply sue for a cut of the pie after the fact. That’s a much more open and shut case than the current legal mess, because all they have to provide is proof that they created the original work or hired the people that did, and then they onus is on Stardock to show that either a) their work is not derivative or b) they have a license. (And if SC:O bombs they can just ignore it) )
Just transferring the “Ur-Quan Masters” mark doesn’t really accomplish much if the project could still be ordered to stop using the alien names, though. Would you also transfer the alien name marks (presuming you get them)?
My problem with the settlement as proposed in the video is that it fails to acknowledge that Stardock probably needs SC:O to be a franchise, or at least to be able to heavily monetize expansion packs or DLC. The game is likely some million $ in budget by now, and there’s no guarantee a single release will break even, specially in the current market and with the added drama (and specially, at least in my case, with Starflight 3’s Fig campaign launching soon, probably even coinciding with SC:O’s planned release).
Thus, any licensing Stardock will agree to will need to include derivative works of SC:O, and it’s back to the starting point again.
Just make it a perpetual license to create derivative works of SC1+2 IP for a cut of the royalties. That’s what I assumed he was suggesting anyway.
Flipping through the pages there it shows a successful PR effort. Right when the dispute started Stardock’s PR guy jumped in and started pushing their narrative followed by Brad. They aren’t needlessly antagonistic and they do a good job of pushing their side of the story resulting in minimal pushback on their claims. They were able to successfully land the idea that P&F is the aggressive party and is trying to prevent Stardock from making a game.
While from a “don’t talk about the lawsuit” perspective P&F are doing the right thing by keeping mostly quiet, but there’s no denying that Stardock’s full court PR press to the point of seeking out and replying to every tiny mention anywhere on the internet to push the PR can be effective.
No, he was suggesting P&F consolidating trademarks and IP through a licensing deal with Stardock that avoided an injuction and used the price of the trademark SD paid as a credit. If the purpose is to consolidate trademarks and IP, a permanent licensing deal is the opposite of what you want (and as I don’t think Stardock can agree to a limited license, I do not think P&F can agree to an unlimited license either).
They have described it as a passion project. In the GDC interview when asked about it Paul replied “absolutely” and described how it would be a sort of retirement project. Something they’d do themselves outside of TfB/Activision if they ever get fired or quit.
I think in one of the original announcements that they were going to return to the story there was something about eventually hiring a team but starting out as something on the side to be done on nights and weekends. That may have been before they arranged a leave from TfB to start on the project.
Keeping mostly quiet? Maybe they’re doing so now, but that’s hardly been the case since this whole thing blew up in October.
I mean, what’s the baseline for mostly quiet? In comparison to Stardock they are basically mute.
Where are they posting? They have their blog of course, but that has a handful of posts. The last two were the defense fund announcement and before that it was the settlement offers from March. The only public statements they have made recently was the letter to youtube lawyer. I think “mostly quiet” is a fair characterization.
Especially in the relative sense where they obviously have alerts set up for any mention of the dispute anywhere on the internet and they are spending tons of time jumping into each of them to push their PR.
Well, the fact we even have this thread and are discussing things is because P&F went public with it. Not that I’m saying it was a bad call on their part by any means, but I wouldn’t exactly call it being quiet.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Exhibit C:
Exhibit D:
Exhibit E:
Exhibit F:
Exhibit G:
Like I said, maybe they’ve recently been quiet, but that’s hardly been the case during the course of this. Stardock also has an actual product in development and set for release. They’re of course going to be doing the PR thing (not that I think they’re doing a very good job of it).
Yes, I mentioned their handful of blog posts. And?
I didn’t say they had not said a word. We could try to argue and parse “mostly quiet” if you like but I think my point was easily understood without such exercise.
In the last nine months, P&F made nine blog posts, and set up the Frungy fund page. Brad and the Stardock PR people have been making multiple social media posts pretty much every day. If you were to print the two sides out, Stardock has been at least an order of magnitude more verbose.
I mean, Stardock has multiple people arguing with random internet people across reddit, their forums, uqm, here, etc. P&F have a few blog posts across like 8 months. In particular, this one seems basically forced by Stardock because they were making all kinds of comments in other places claiming that they were making way more reasonable settlement offers when the reality is they were not as the various documents filed have shown.
https://www.dogarandkazon.com/blog/2018/3/18/strange-settlement-on-an-alien-planet
Stardock also has a product with millions invested to protect. There’d be a lot of PR anyway, but in a better world it would be marketing and fun stuff, not this awfulness!
You posted while I was replying to Lantz asking “what’s the baseline for mostly quiet?”. I don’t know if I have a baseline exactly, but P&F don’t meet it in my eyes and I included the links to demonstrate why. If it does in yours, fair enough! :)
The sheer amount of time and effort on pushing the PR, especially including the CEO who is undeniably the decision maker in the case, is undoubtedly creating a bubble that reinforces their narrative and remove all doubt not only of it but that it could be doubted in the first place. That probably has a lot to do with the dismissal of entire forums where their line is not being bought as just being filled with haters. This is likely causing a lot of intransigence and preventing settlement.
Even if you start out knowing some claim is on shaky ground, if you yourself repeat those claims many times a day every day it going to seem an axiomatic truth after a while.
Forget where any baseline is. My statement was very obviously a contrast between the two sides.
I do appreciate your taking a contrary stance and while I may reply with sarcasm at times I do appreciate being called on my bullshit. However there’s got to be some much better bullshit in my recent posts to call me on than this .
Also, I don’t have to go very far to see Brad himself pushing how great it is that P&F announced a ‘cannon sequel’:
Here’s Brad saying how much they really want them to make their game and are trying so hard to make sure they do:
Do any of the actual corespondences or documents in the filings support this?
I won’t bother linking every post from that thread, but I would suggest reading them.
I can’t in any way reconcile the earlier statements about this whole situation with any of the actual filings or current accusations. Brad was not only claiming that it was awesome that P&F were announcing what he himself was calling a cannon sequel but was taking a small amount of credit himself for making it happen by begging them to do it for 4 years. And now the fact that they have announced what he was himself claiming to nagging them to do is what he is claiming was the totally horrific knife to Stardock that absolutely forced them to have to sue?
What is a possible interpretation of that isn’t straight lying to us?
Genuinely, Thrag, please allow me to apologize. I think my post may have come off in a different way than I had intended. I am by no means trying to call you out on bullshit or anything like that, we just had different perspectives on the “volume” of how P&F has been conducting their end of things and thought it might be interesting to discuss.
I think everything you’ve stated has been stated in good faith and that you’re not trying to bullshit your way to win internet arguments or points. I really do apologize if I came off the wrong way, it happens to me sometimes in written text.