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GoFundMe Link

So how did Stardock get involved in this? In 2013 the corporation purportedly bought a few Star Control assets at a bankruptcy auction, but importantly not our games or creative work. Shortly after the auction, Brad Wardell contacted us to see if we would help him make a new Star Control game, or at least license our creative work to Stardock. We gave a clear ‘no’ to both offers, because we wanted to preserve our creative work for our own projects. For the next 4 years Brad Wardell repeatedly asked to license the original material, and each time we rejected him, Brad assured us Stardock would never ever use any of our material without permission. These assurances turned out to be false.

Shortly after we announced Ghosts of the Precursors, Stardock claimed they had always had rights to our original, creative material and began to bundle and sell our game without permission. When we tried to stop these illegal sales, Stardock filed their lawsuit.

We (Fred and Paul) have worked together for 30 years and have seen almost everything the game industry has to offer, but have never seen or experienced a predatory legal attack like this -- an established, corporate publisher attempting to bully two lone developers into surrendering their most treasured game, characters and unique universe.

The cudgel Brad Wardell and Stardock hold over us is huge. The legal defense fees could exceed $2,000,000 and must be paid by us personally.

We are willing to fight this battle to its end but need your help. We are asking for contributions of any size to The Frungy Defense Fund.

If you have ever enjoyed one of our many games or believe the rights to creative work should be respected, we need your help.

Thank you, and please spread the word… and/or Juffo-Wup.

P&B Blog

RockPaperShotgun coverages: Part 1 and Part 2

Deeply saddened to hear that, thanks for sharing.

Eh...trying to claim rights as individuals after the development house is dust and the publishing rights have bounced around the western hemisphere is going to be pretty difficult.

What they need is a counter claim by someone else on the original crew claiming that no really,it belongs to them instead.

Having read both sides I am wholly unable to determine who is actually the bad guy here.

What a confusing mess.

 Ouze wrote:
Having read both sides I am wholly unable to determine who is actually the bad guy here.

What a confusing mess.

Unfortunately, rights issues are often like that, particularly when a bankruptcy sale is involved (which is how Stardock bought whatever it purchased, iirc). It's entirely possible that both sides believe themselves to be legally in the right.

This just took an interesting turn...

Basically, a judge has said to Stardock that since it filed a lawsuit against F&P, F&P can proceed with a DMCA against Stardock's game. Stardock's game, Star Control Origins, had already gone on sale on Steam. And now it isn't. On sale, that is.

Now keep in mind that Star Control Origins contains no story-based IP material from the original Star Control games, aside from the fact that humans exist within the game. I own it (and I can still play it on Steam; you just can't buy a new copy of it), and can confirm that none of the alien races from the original game exist within the new game. There is a race that *could* be stretched into the Arilou, though to the best of my knowledge you never actually see their ships (even in Arena mode). But there's no race of utter and complete cowards. There isn't a race of intelligent fungi. There's no race of practical joker geneticists. And there aren't any hot alien blue-skinned space babes. There's a group that left Earth in the distant past, but they're not a group of androids that suffered severe discrimination. Rather, they're a group of post-humans who left voluntarily for reasons that can be uncovered over the course of the game.

The judge has stated for the record that upholding the DMCA does not mean that the judge is siding with one side or the other in the lawsuit. It merely means that given that the lawsuit exists, the judge feels it's overly reckless for Stardock to release the new game. However, given that the only thing I can think of that F&P might conceivably be able to point to as a copyright infringement is the title itself, imo this is an overstretch on the part of F&P.

Stardock had announced a four-part DLC release schedule, and made it available through a Season Pass type of affair (and only as part of the Season Pass). At this point, only the first portion of the DLC has been released. I'm guessing that until the legal troubles are resolved, the three additional DLC portions won't see the light of day.

Hopefully stardock wins this, there is no wrong doing here and neither of the plaintives have a real case here, its a waste of everyones time

I wonder if GOG will join in on this.
I'm serious they've done quite a lot of work in this whole area of Computer game rights hunting since many of the old titles they sought to bring back were trapped in legal messes where rights were hard to work out who did and didn't own them and to bring together various rights holders to get titles back on sale.

Considering they sell Stardock software including Origins (at least pretty sure I saw it advertised there) it might even be in their interests to try and resolve the matter quicker.

They'd at least have direct experience in hunting down many of the rights elements; even though the case will still rest with the court.



Honestly I'd be surprised if Stardock used a licence illegally and chances are that they do have legal justification for their use of the material as they have done. Thing is I guess both parties smelt money with the title and Stardock having made the game might well now have made that apparent and the holders of the rest of the rights might well feel that they want that pie.

But like said above, both groups might well have legal angles that justify their own stance and position in the case. It might even be an odd quirk that both are almost legally in the right at the same time.




Hopefully this resolves quickly, but often as not these things end up a messy drawn out process. That those issuing the challenge are trying to raise money through GoFundMe does suggest that they might well find their case falls apart; they've only 40K after 6 months and, honestly, I can't see geeks reaching into their pockets to provide money for something that isn't a new product and, if anything, will likely take a product off the market. Like it or not the average fan would be more likely to dip their hand in for Stardock. At least not to the tune of £2million. Heck just hitting half to a million on fundraising sites is a major achievement and that's when the group are offering a product for sale.

(I'm not weighing in on the morals side of things as I've no idea of enough of the history of either side to say if either has acted immorally - Stardock did legally buy the game rights; as a company it was an asset to be used and it would seem that they did stick within the guidelines of the licence that they paid out for.

Amusingly the DLC season pass still is available on Steam, it just isn't attached to the game. Which is confusing, and weird, especially since there is no mention that the base game isn't available.

The judge's statement is pretty baffling, since the game was released months ago.

 Overread wrote:

Considering they sell Stardock software including Origins (at least pretty sure I saw it advertised there) it might even be in their interests to try and resolve the matter quicker.

IIRC, GOG got hit with the DMCA order as well. I've heard that Origins is still available on Stardock's own website, but haven't confirmed it.


At the moment, I'm having trouble summoning up much sympathy for F&P. Toys for Bob, their company, announced a Star Control sequel over a decade ago, iirc. And while it's possible that they had financial issues getting it started at the time, they've since developed the Skylanders line. While I don't own any of those products myself, the Skylanders line seems to have done reasonably well in sales. So there's a big question mark in my mind about why nothing happened with the announced sequel. And then pretty much right after Stardock got the Star Control name rights from the Atari bankruptcy sale and said that they were going to release a new game, F&P once again announced a Star Control sequel. In short, if they really wanted to do a sequel, then why did they sit on it for so long, and only make an announcement after Stardock announced their own game (Stardock announced its game in 2016; F&P reannounced their sequel in 2017)? The fact that they waited until *after* Stardock had bought the rights and announced their own game makes me think that they don't really have serious plans for a sequel at this time. Rather I'm guessing that they have vague plans to release one some day in the future, and were worried about fan loyalty switching from their setting to the new one in the meantime.

On the other hand, Stardock is the one that apparently initiated the legal action in this instance (not the DMCA, but the legal action that ultimately led up to it). So Stardock kind of walked right into the DMCA.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Formosa wrote:
Hopefully stardock wins this, there is no wrong doing here and neither of the plaintives have a real case here, its a waste of everyones time

Keep in mind that there are two lawsuits here, one from each party aimed at the other party. From what I've read, Stardock filed the first suit, and the F&P responded with a counter-suit of their own.



Edit -

I just read a comment on the Steam forums where a Stardock rep states that they still intend to get the Earth Rising Pass content out as planned, though they might have to figure out an alternate means of distributing it.

Stardock likely has resources and means to keep paying their coding staff to work on the expansion content; much of which has likely already been worked on. So chances are they can keep that going - the real risk is that they end up with a core product they cant' sell and DLC they can't deliver to gamers.

They might be able to roll the DLC out for free to all existing purchasers of the game. Another option would be to redesign the core game and change the games title and re-release it as a different product (even though gameplay would be identical) and then have the DLC release as a stand alone expansion with those who bought the season pass getting it for free.

 Overread wrote:

They might be able to roll the DLC out for free to all existing purchasers of the game. Another option would be to redesign the core game and change the games title and re-release it as a different product (even though gameplay would be identical) and then have the DLC release as a stand alone expansion with those who bought the season pass getting it for free.

Given that the name is quite literally the *only* thing that they purchased from Atari, I don't think Stardock is inclined to change it.

Eumerin wrote:


On the other hand, Stardock is the one that apparently initiated the legal action in this instance (not the DMCA, but the legal action that ultimately led up to it). So Stardock kind of walked right into the DMCA.

Wardell effectively tried to steal the underlying IP via the primary litigation (mostly by driving the original rightsholders out of existence via costs). That it's blowing up in Stardock's face is sad for what used to be a pretty damn good development house (Sins and GC/GC2 were my jam for a lot of years), but unchecked ego is poison no matter where it comes home to roost.

The whole situation is a goddamn mess. There's no winners here.

Sterling191 wrote:

Eumerin wrote:


On the other hand, Stardock is the one that apparently initiated the legal action in this instance (not the DMCA, but the legal action that ultimately led up to it). So Stardock kind of walked right into the DMCA.

Wardell effectively tried to steal the underlying IP via the primary litigation (mostly by driving the original rightsholders out of existence via costs). That it's blowing up in Stardock's face is sad for what used to be a pretty damn good development house (Sins and GC/GC2 were my jam for a lot of years), but unchecked ego is poison no matter where it comes home to roost.

The whole situation is a goddamn mess. There's no winners here.

As I mentioned above, Toys for Bob has been heavily involved in a multi-billion dollar product. So I don't think they were in any danger of being bankrupted by legal fees (unless they've seriously mismanaged their money), despite what they claimed in the crowdfunding push.

In any case, I don't think this is a matter of unchecked ego. Stardock has a history of taking an old pre-existing idea or property, and running with it. Galactic Civilizations got its start back during the early part of the 4x craze. Stardock later tried to buy the rights to Master of Magic. When that was rebuffed, they instead released the simllar Elemental (and the revamped follow-up after the original Elemental failed badly). The lead-up to this appears to just be more of the same. Wardell wanted a product that was dead, but had nostalgia value. No one was even attempting to do anything with it. So Stardock bought the brand rights from Atari, and announced its own release of the game. And Toys for Bob "just happened" to announce a sequel to Star Control 2 the following year. Toys for Bob had been twiddling its thumbs for over a decade without actually doing any substantive work on the sequel. But shortly after Stardock announced that they were reviving the brand name, Toys for Bob made a "No, guys, the REAL stuff is over here!" announcement.

Can you blame Wardell for getting upset with the duo?

Stardock isn't blameless, and has done some stuff it shouldn't have (such as posting downloadable wallpapers and similar items featuring races from the original games). But what this looks like to me is that Toys for Bob is attempting to undercut Stardock's product. Anyone who didn't get cranky about that sort of stunt wouldn't be human.

And it's back.

Star Control: Origins is once again up for sale on both Steam and GoG. This appears to have happened just within the last day or so. Brad Wardell is being close-mouthed about what exactly caused this change, aside from a comment that suggests that both Valve and GoG are siding with Stardock in the take down dispute (which should probably be seen as separate and distinct from the other legal skirmishing).

That's good, from looking into this a little bit I really feel like the litigation was too aggressive. They billed it like they were defending themselves, but it instead feels like they're attacking someone else...