There was a three year term with the possibility of renewal. The language to this effect is on page five of this, the third addendum.
Although Starflight is better. :-P
I remember looooooving Starflight but the UI has not held up to modern standards as much as Star Control II’s UI has.
Actually, their argument, in ¶23 of their complaint, appears to claim trademark rights to the names because those alien names appeared in the game manual. More analysis here.
That seems to be a temporary link. The fan FAQ maintains a list of all of the relevant trademarks and their status here, for future reference.
Actually, the third addendum governed the never-released StarCon 4. The second addendum governed SC3; its termination conditions were the same as those of SC1&2.
Are you aware of this?
And yes, that’s Greg Johnson’s team.
100,000,000% accurate /ducks back out of conversation
I meant the new game!
You can read a lot about it here.
I’m sure folks there who have played the beta can give their impressions, plus there are a lot of in-progress screenshots and video.
Yes I have. Brad and I go way back. So despite my best attempts at being neutral and unbiased over that fiasco, I can’t be trusted.
ps: Those guys don’t have a leg to stand on.
11 posts were merged into an existing topic: Stardock owns Star Control and is planning an “XCOM-like” reboot
Considering we have literal PR people popping up in here I don’t think you have to worry so much about presenting a biased opinion. That seal is broken.
Just a little aside @tom_chick, in deference to @dsmart
I went and I did the legwork to find about that “Brad and I go way back” bit. I would be interested to read a piece by you titled “Electronic Software Distribution, 2009-2019”, and do a post mortem of what you got right on this gamasutra post (quite a lot, I must say), and what did Brad get right (even someone called “Dave Long” said so hence…).
Thanks for doing the legwork. That was an interesting read, especially considering what has happened since 2009. The exhange, in the comments section, between Brad and Derek is particularly illuminating, and echoes a lot of what’s been going on in this thread, sadly enough.
I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a twitter feed, and he was given a blog, and he posted as a conqueror bent on conquest.
That article and comments section is something. I mean, sometimes I get a little rolly-eyes going on some of Derek’s writing, as it comes off as very, uh, self-confident, let’s say. ;)
But here, he’s clearly got it right, from the convenience and robust utility of SteamWorks, and how quickly it would find widespread adoption.
Derek: “This is a big train coming down the tracks. Best to jump on now.”
The comments section: “We see no train.”
Derek’s confidence was justified.
What Derek meant by us going way back is that we’ve been friends for 30 years. He’s really that old (unlike myself of course…). But we have also argued for 30 years online from Usenet to comment sections to forums and always regarding the tech industry. Somewhere I have a picture of us at a Qt3 party where I’m wearing my Qt3 polo shirt.
The issue was whether digital distributors should include games that use Steamworks since doing so would require selling Steam keys and requiring the installation of the Steam store. It was a catch-22: Include them and you’re now a Steam distributor. Don’t include them and you’re passing up mega games like COD.
Impulse tried to counter this with Impulse::Reactor which was just a DLL that was vendor neutral. No Impulse account or Impulse bundling required. But it was too little, too late.
Once developers started using Steamworks the jig was up on third party digital distribution. Everyone now sells Steam keys (except GOG).
I remember in 2010 when Civilization V shipped with Steamworks and combined with the fact that I’d moved our best devs onto Impulse (instead of having them on Elemental) that it was time to make a decision – game developer or digital distributor selling Steam keys. The end result was to sell Impulse to GameStop.
I saw the train. I just thought it was a little shady how they were going to railroad everyone into using Steam.
Instead of good, clean coal?
Now this thread reminds of the “I hate Steam” ones from the old days. Did QT3 have one of those? Yes, I know I can search but it’s all water under the bridge in 2018…