I am not sure what would be the relevance of the ongoing legal proceedings if they don’t seem to be related to the gameplay.
Of course, they may well affect the way reviewers experience the game, priming them to get focused on bugs, drab or thematically inert art, uninspired gameplay rather than being distracted by first impressions, marketing materials, vibes etc as positive/negative reviews of bad/good games tend to be.
I agree that is major smoking gun. It clearly establishes P&F’s rights to the material, the 3 year duration of the license and most everything else they have claimed. Stardock does not get to purchase the agreement over a decade later and say, “we have altered the deal. Pray we do not alter it further”. Contract law does not work that way.
So simply for the sake of argument/curiosity, let’s say Stardock releases the game this week and it included elements PF claim are copyright infringement.
Are PF ordered to hold back from a DCMA claim with Steam/GoG? (or has that not been decided yet?)
If PF’s claims of infringement are ultimately found to be of merit a year later, what would the possible realistic penalties be to Stardock due to the infringement?
Yes. P&F voluntarily agreed to temporarily not file any DMCAs until the court has a chance to rule on Stardock’s request that the judge issue an injunction barring them from doing so until the outcome of the trial.
The new motions are the arguments for and against that injunction. Stardock’s initial brief was last week, P&F’s reply was yesterday, and Stardock gets one more response on Friday. Then there might be an oral argument on it before the judge rules.
Potentially fairly significant. If SC:O is actually found to be infringing, the statutory penalties could reach many millions. The theoretical maximum would be something like a quarter-million per copy. Then again, it’s up to a jury, so there’s a huge variance.
@Thrag, that bit about potential sales lost and the reference to piracy are, of course, completely baseless. I remember when Demigod was released and it flopped that Brad claimed that was because of pirates bringing down the servers and ruining the game’s release. I have a hard time imagining most people would reach for a torrent if they couldn’t buy the game legally – they’d either wait or move on to the next game.
As regards the sales numbers – $2 million in 14 days means (assuming revenue and a retail price of $40) that Stardock expects about 50,000 copies to be sold during that time. That doesn’t seem overly ambitious, I guess, especially considering how expensive Origins supposedly was to make. That $3.1 million figure for the first 60 days seems rather low, too (fewer than 78,000 copies sold at $40 a pop). That means Stardock won’t break even for at least a few months. Or maybe my maths are off? Could be they’re counting on the long tail, considering stuff like GalCiv III sold several hundred thousand copies (lots of them no doubt at a deep discount, but still)?
I guess it depends what you want from a review? I think it might be worth mentioning to potential customers that the publisher is involved in an ongoing legal dispute with the original creators, and that money you give to Stardock will be used in part to pay their legal bills. I assume that’s relevant, even though I know a lot of people won’t care about it at all.
Money someone gives to another is theirs to do with as they please unless there’s an agreement to the contrary (I’m looking at you, Star Citizen). I think you’re stretching things a bit to think of a review printing the legal bills angle as a public service.
Technically, depending on where the sale happened there’s a cut off the top of that. Steam I believe takes 30%, so $28 a pop for sales from there.
Knowing there’s an ongoing legal battle that could significantly change the game seems important enough to mention in a review. I don’t know that it should go much further though.
Sure. But by that logic, you shouldn’t care at all about who you give your money to when you buy something, which makes everything strictly transactional.
You’re right, I forgot about that. So the sales figures would be higher: $2 million at $28 per copy works out to 72,000 copies sold. That makes the estimates even stranger, though.
The original creators of SCO are Stardock, I don’t think anybody disputes that.
Probably I expect something different from a review. Your position sounds a bit like one should put a paragraph about how much of an abusive bastard David Foster Wallace was in a review of a re edition of Infinite Jest… or more to the point, that every review of a book carried by Simon & Schuster must mention the aborted book deal with Milo.
I think that the fact that the original creators are not involved is worth discussion given the history of the series. In particular the general poor reception of Star Control 3 which did not involve them. I would agree that it doesn’t need a lot of coverage or detail, but I think mentioning that the original creators are once again not involved in a Star Control game and are actually part of litigation surrounding it has value to readers.
That seems fair to me.
I don’t think game reviews have a need to write about the lawsuit in their reviews, nor should they really. ‘Game Journalists’ have had a lot of opportunity to write about this, and there really has not been a lot of comprehensive work on the subject in the gaming press.
I would think a Game Review would be about the game, and whether or not it is worth time and money. I still believe, given the average gamer, they could care less about where the IP came from and who thinks they have been wronged and who is thinks they are right. And it probably does not matter honestly as the matter is being resolved through the legal system. that appears to be the chosen path, both by Stardock and PF.
In the end the suit will be about who gets the money from the sales, not who is right and who is wrong. I do think though Stardock is taking an unnecessary risk. Not because of public outcry and bad publicity, but because of monies ultimately. Those orange alien images posted up thread a month or so back and with the description as to how the derived alien came to be makes me personally believe Stardock is not thinking in a clear and focused way about how this could be a problem and there could be a valid infringement claim. If the race names/etc are included, I would think there would be even stronger evidence. I get the feeling the whole case has gone emotional for both parties and that could definitely end in some pain/heartbreak for one side or another. For sure the attorneys will cry tears of joy.
Yes, of course. But we’re talking about the lawsuit here, right? The one where Stardock is suing P&F – the original creators of Star Control I and II. Origins is a prequel/spiritual successor/whatever to Star Control II. The trademark ties the games together, however feebly. In short:
Yes, this. I expect a review to put a game (or anything, really) into context. In this particular case, Origins is another instalment of a series of games united by the Star Control trademark, and the second sequel made without involvement from P&F. That seems useful information to me, in the same way that e.g. Call to Power is a Civilization game without involvement from Sid Meier.
I don’t know Wallace, but reviewers of books written by e.g. Orson Scott Card often (?) point out that he’s a homophobic asshole, and reviewers of movies by Roman Polanski are likely to bring up his sexual abuse case. Similarly, earlier in this thread, we talked about the hiring of Adam Baldwin (of GamerGate infamy) to provide a voice in Origins, and what that does/doesn’t signify with regards to Stardock/Brad. Some people aren’t bothered by this kind of stuff at all.
The Simon & Schuster thing is a little different – they backed out of that deal in the end. If they ever publish a similar author, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if a reviewer brought that up in order to make a particular point (i.e. S&S are apparently fine publishing right-wing authors). That’s how reputations are made, for good or ill, after all. Again, though, some people might not care one way or the other, viewing a product in isolation, divorced from whoever was involved in its creation.
In short, like I said before, if anyone wants to view something in isolation, ignore the history and the context of a thing, that’s obviously their choice. If the only consideration is, “Do I want to buy this game?”, based solely on the product itself, divested from the context in which it was created as well as the history of the company and people involved, then more power to them.
But that’s not really what I’m looking for in a review, how I review things, or indeed make purchasing decisions myself. But I’m certainly not going to ram my opinions down anyone’s throat. ;-)
Eh, I can definitely think of plenty of reasons to be concerned about all this stuff from a review-perspective even beyond the moral hazard stuff that @JoshoB is arguing so elegantly.
For instance, if SD’s claims fall through completely and, say, they are forced to hand over the vast majority of their gross earnings to P&F in half a year’s time, that spells some not-insignificant financial trouble for Stardock. For all their myriad flaws and missteps, one thing they’ve generally been pretty okay about is post-release support, including of financially unsuccessful games. Losing a major suit related to SCO would probably put a major damper on their interest in investing even more time and money into it, however. I know I’ve personally been worried about whether or not that Founder’s Edition I bought a couple of years back would ever translate into an expansion pack if this case goes south for SD, to the point that for that and several other reasons I wondered if I should try to return it, but my recollection from the Elemental days was that Stardock didn’t support that :(
Moreover, one of my personal strongest objections came out when Brad, in a manner of speaking, said that aliens like the Arilou and Melnorme had been included in order to strengthen their case on their trademark claims on those alien names. I don’t really want last-minute Hail Mary legal ploys to inform the design of my games any more than I want P2W/F2P design structures informing the gameplay, and I’d love to be informed of either as a review-reader.
Finally, if I’m just a casual oldschool Star Control fan who stumbles into this thing and has a sudden burgeoning of 25-year-old memories of a game I loved growing up but had mostly forgotten about and want to dive in, credit-card-first, knowing that the game is a strong homage/reboot of that series, but isn’t developed by any of the original team (aside from a musician, as far as I’m aware), and in fact is now being done against the wishes of the original creators might influence my enthusiasm.
I don’t think the lawsuit needs to consume 90% of every review printed for the game, nor do I expect every reviewer to attempt to provide an insightful and carefully neutral summary of the entire proceeding. But it’s background information that can influence the purchasability for some people, just like the presence or absence of FOV sliders or 21:9 support or whether the game developer in question forces its staff to work dozens of hours of unpaid overtime every week for months leading up to launch, effectively widowing their wives. . .
I have two nephews who are addicted to Star Control II (or rather to The Ur-Quan Masters freeboot.) When I told them about Origins they went from “A new Star Control game, omigod” to “Wait, they’re suing the original creators? You can’t pay me to play that game” in about 30 seconds.
I agree that it doesn’t make sense to center reviews around the lawsuit, but yeah, I think it’s a legitimate subject.
That wasn’t very clear in that off the cuff remark, mate. Obviously, if the legal proceedings have as a result, say, that the super melee play-alike is removed from SC:O, then it has an obvious and direct effect on gameplay.
Another thing is the journalistic coverage of the case, which can be carried on in its own form and purpose. RPS has carried at least two articles on the case.
The context is generated by proper journalistic coverage. Reviews - of pop culture stuff like this, not academic papers or books - are expressions of subjective opinions on how the reviewer perceives the work, and whether she finds it worthy of being recommended or not. Certainly, mentioning that there is an ongoing legal dispute is fair, but what else should be said beyond that?
There is a difference between judging Ender’s Game as what it is, a somewhat pulpy sci fi YA novel written by a rather conservative mormon, seeking connections between the prose and the activism OSC has carried over the years. Not every review needs to be an exercise in hermeneutics that ensures that impure thoughts are clearly delimited with advisory disclaimers.
In the same way, a review of John Varley’s Steel Beach by a rabid conservative Christian howling about gender fluidity as a moral hazard would have a respectable intellectual status. It explains why the book hasn’t been published electronically, I guess.
Didn’t they end up giving people that bought Elemental both of the follow on titles for free?
They did, yes. But I was a pre-order backer for that, too, that wanted out, but since tge pre-order granted beta access, they didn’t allow cancelations. The free content for years afterwards was great, but I really needed the, cash a couple of weeks before launch, IIRC, hah!
Ah well, hope it’s clearer now. :-)
Certainly. And if the reviewer in question believes that the lawsuit informs their opinion about the matter in one way or the other, I expect them to say so. I don’t see the hard divide here between a game review and “games journalism” – one doesn’t exclude the other, in my opinion.
Sure, and I already said that some (most?) people likely won’t care – and that no doubt includes some (most?) reviewers of Star Control: Origins. In this age of Steam reviews and what have you, I expect quite a few people will leave negative reviews about the game citing the lawsuit, while others focus strictly on the game itself, leaving it up to prospective buyers to make up their minds about this matter regardless.
Just for me, personally, I appreciate reviews that place the product in question in context.
Yeah, the review probably shouldn’t focus on it, but it makes sense to at least mention it.