This whole thing is entertaining, but in the end, who cares about Goodwill?
One of these parties, Stardock, is going to release a new space exploration game for us this year. The other party, P&F, will never release a new game for us. They had 20 years and didn’t do it. It’s vaporware, it will never exist, it would never have existed.
I’m with the party actually making a game, frankly.
I have been busy, but you I had a chance to go back through our old conversation on this board and compiled some of the statements that make me consider that I have been lied to about this situation. They are in my post above.
I don’t really expect you to agree and you have whatever corporate and PR reasons beyond convincing my opinions, but I felt it was worth a direct reply that I am not being melodramatic or projecting my feelings onto PR statements. We had a back and forth personal conversation about this where you chose to provide a lot of details which I believe were lies to make you and your company look good to prospective purchasers. That is why I have stated that I feel lied to directly.
That greatly echoes my feelings on the matter. It’s the apparent dishonesty of their changing position.
What makes it so much worse for me is what we’ve had the CEO himself demonstrating right here. The lack of taking any responsibility for their actions. Everything is “They were forced to”. Often blame is deflected to the lawyers or something being just legal tactics.
Just above we have a literal example of “I’m not suing them”. The company that is suing them is completely under his control. That right there is the whole package. Transparent dishonesty since obviously he has indeed directed a lawsuit against them. The total lack of owning one’s own actions with the it’s not me routine.
When I point out how these kinds of justifications seem dishonest and likely do more harm than good with the audience I’m apparently acting “unpleasant”. Following the mindset that one is always “forced” into responses, schoolyard swipes must be made in response to this unpleasantness. They are justified by accusations of prior incivility levied against the recipient of the swipes. Justified in those accusations or not, the theme of blaming others for one’s own actions persists.
Over and over in Stardock’s PR and Brad’s posts there’s the victim mentality and deflection of responsibility. They are forced to do what they are doing because they are victims. It’s literally the entire narrative. They were forced to sue P&F because P&F were victimizing them. Thus being forced to sue, they are forced to aggressively grab all the IP.
That’s rather mercenary of you, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised?
No one is owed a Star Control game, which posts like yours seem to imply.
There’s no reason to think that the original creators wouldn’t make a sequel on their own. There’s also no reason that Stardock couldn’t have just created a game like it using their own universe as noted above without the name. They did that with their fantasy game that was supposed to be like Master of Magic, didn’t they?
Something that has been bothering me in this thread is how disingenuous Brad is at times.
For instance he has said multiple times in this thread that he is not suing anyone. The company that he owns and wholly controls is suing someone and fundamentally there is no difference. Trying to paint himself as somehow harmless and not party to this is an absurdity. I cannot tell if he truly believes the line of bunk he is pushing or if he thinks that the rest of us have IQs below 80 and would believe such a statement. The former strikes me as delusional and the latter is insulting and since Brad does not strike me as someone who is delusional, I can only conclude that this is a gross lack of respect shown to those who are reading and/or participating this thread. Then he tries to paint himself as some sort of victim and pariah for some of his political beliefs (and I am not even sure what those might be; is he a Holocaust denier or something?). Again this shows a lack of respect to this community.
If someone has no respect for others here it is not the type of person I wish to support financially. The more Brad posts in an insulting and careless manner the less likely I am to purchasing any of Stardock’s products.
EDIT - this seems to mirror Thrag’s post which was composed at the same time as this one.
No worries. My reply probably came off more serious than it was meant.
And that wasn’t my characteristic sarcasm above. I do want to be called on my bullshit when it seems like I’m bullshitting. I appreciate being challenged.
Absurdity. That’s really the perfect word for so many of these claims. So much of Stardock’s position is just outright absurd. I’m sure in text my posts come across like an overzealous prosecutor in a courtroom melodrama but I find so much of this situation (and this thread) just so absurdly funny. I can’t help but laugh at some of the PR.
I’m pretty sure it’s been pointed out to you that this isn’t an either/or scenario.
In one case, both get to make their independent games. In the other P&F can’t make a game without it being under Stardock’s control.
The worst case for Stardock at this point is probably that they’d have to remove the Arilou and any other class races or ships, and that they might have to file a new trademark for “Star Control”.
Let’s stop pretending that (other than the recent willful infringement) SC:O is under threat. The only legal threat to its release is the one they are creating by intentionally including things under dispute.
I can’t help how you feel. But I will review your allegations of “lying”:
When they first announced their game, we were very supportive. We assumed that they would be working with us in some form because they were so strongly associating with our trademark. Once it became clear that wasn’t the case, we asked that they cease using our trademarks and stop referring to their game as a sequel to it.
And once they began to attempt to cancel our trademark, we obviously had to defend ourselves. Cause and effect.
This kind of reasoning would be akin to saying that Paul and Fred lied when they said that Stardock has the Star Control trademarks (over and over again) but then turned around and began claiming that Stardock doesn’t actually have the trademark.
You repeatedly said that you expected them to do it separately from you. Here’s one of them, but there are plenty others.
As far as this:
This is about whether you have been honest and telling the truth at various points along this extended conversation to me (and to the other members of this community). Whether your legal opponent is telling the truth in their blogs or filings has no bearing on your good faith here in this community.
If you have to resort to some kind of equivalency that P&F are lying in their blog posts as why it would be okay for you to lie to me in a personal conversation then that re-enforces my view that you are aware that you were making untrue claims to look better and now you are trying to minimize them by blaming the other side. But how is that supposed to change my opinion? P&F are not in dispute with me, I don’t really care about their legal situation.
I understand that you are involved in a contentious legal situation, but you are coming to this community to tell a lot of reasonable people that they are not discussing in good faith so you should consider if you are discussing in good faith yourself.
You forgot this:
There are also emails between me and them where I said the same thing. Whether an independent project OR published by us, they would still need to work with us on licensing if they want to use our IP.
No because I don’t think that when someone changes their opinion it constitutes lying. If Paul and Fred say they now believe that Stardock doesn’t really own the Star Control trademark I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to call them liars. I think they’re wrong but I don’t believe they are acting in bad faith.
That sames to be the fundamental difference here. You seem really quick to assume that people who either change their minds based on new information being present or because how you interpret their words must be lying.
And please knock off the “coming to this community” bit as if I’m some sort of interloper, Lantz. I’ve been here as long as you have. 16 years now. That’s before we even made Galactic Civilizations for Windows. And Me disagreeing with someone is not tantamount to saying they’re arguing in bad faith.
Yes, exactly. And that’s the problem. You’ve said different things. Nobody here is arguing that your position has been consistent.
That’s more an issue of confirmation bias than anything else.
There is a giant gulf between being a first party developer and an independent developer who is simply licensing IP for their game. But both still mean that they are working with that third party.
Someone who wants to use another person’s IP is going to need to work with that IP owner in some way. That should be self-evident.
Doesn’t seem self-evident, there’s always the option to sue them as individuals claiming that they are frauds who never actually created the IP you want to use.
“IP” as a term confuses the issue between copyright and trademark, no?
You were saying something about arguing in bad faith earlier I believe…
Yea. IP ranges from patents to trademarks to copyrights.
This isn’t a personal argument, it’s a statement of potential legal arguments in a thread about legal arguments.
I am confident that you are sturdy enough to handle my comments.
Yes. I just wanted to make sure you understood why I won’t be responding to you any further.