
Star Control: Origins removed from Steam after DMCA takedown notice - rkagerer
https://www.pcgamer.com/star-control-origins-removed-from-steam-after-dmca-takedown-notice/
======
Centigonal
The Star Control devs (and the company Toys for Bob) have been very
accomodating toward freeware fan projects and ports of their games (see
[http://sc2.sourceforge.net/](http://sc2.sourceforge.net/)) for decades now.

The fact that they're litigating this leads me to think Stardock's actions are
really egregious.

~~~
cdumler
I've been a long time fan of Star Control. I've been watching things for a
while. If you check out YouTuber Law on YouTube, you can get a really good
take. Not a lawyer, so my layperson's understanding:

The creators sold the rights for Star Control's trade mark, marketing and
distribution rights on the condition that if the game fails to generate $1,000
in revenue then all rights revert to them. The distributing company eventually
stopped selling the game. The creators presumed the rights reverted to them,
but never got a declaratory judgement to legally cover that they did. The
defunct rights were eventually sold through companies until it wound up with
Atari, who sold the trade mark rights to Stardock. Stardock believes that the
contract for the copywrite is still in effect; thus, they own the franchise.

Stardock wanted to make a game and began doing so. It's he said/she said at
this point: Creators says they were in discussions with Stardock who wanted to
by rights to the copywrite to make a game, but ultimately the creators said,
"No, we want to make a sequel." Stardock says they told the creators they have
the rights to make the game and wanted their blessings/input. There appears to
be evidence that Stardock's version of events have changed over time and
misrepresents events.

Whatever the case, Stardock decided to go ahead with the idea that the most
the creators could own is the original characters, artwork and music. So, they
made a game with the core idea but with alternate versions of the characters,
art and music. The DMCA takedown was issued because it appears that Stardock
then decided to use some original characters in the game, to which the
original creators claim copywrite.

The most recent court ruling was less than stellar for Stardock, who used very
poor legal arguments:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieb1ajwwUFo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieb1ajwwUFo)

~~~
smacktoward
Good summary! One small correction/amplification:

 _> Stardock wanted to make a game and began doing so. It's he said/she said
at this point_

The filing in the Leonard French video indicates that the court has access to
correspondence between Wardell and Reiche/Ford from this period, in which
Wardell explicitly acknowledges Reiche/Ford's claims to the _SC1 /2_ IP and
says that he accepts those claims as valid and would not incorporate such IP
into his new game without a license from them. (Which Reiche/Ford refused to
grant.)

Much later on, Stardock released DLC content packs for _Star Control: Origins_
that incorporated some of those very IP elements Wardell acknowledged
Reiche/Ford's rights to into that game. Example:

\- _Star Control: Origins_ Arilou Content Pack:
[https://steamdb.info/app/899550/](https://steamdb.info/app/899550/)

\- The Arilou alien race from _Star Control_ and _Star Control 2_ :
[http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Arilou_Lalee%27lay](http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Arilou_Lalee%27lay)

So if Wardell is saying now that he has never accepted Reiche and Ford's
claimed rights to the _SC1 /2_ IP, and the court has written evidence that at
one point in the past he absolutely _did_ acknowledge those rights, that would
put the dispute outside the "he said/she said" zone.

~~~
Benjamin_Dobell
Typically when you buy a franchise you have the right to use characters and
develop derivative stories. Acknowledging that Reiche and Ford own the IP for
Star Control 1 & 2 probably just means Stardock don't expect royalties from
those exact titles.

This is actually really common place and appears near identical to how 20th
Century Fox owns rights to Star Wars Episode 4 but Disney own the franchise
and can use the same characters and develop derivative products.

~~~
anjbe
The rights for Star Control have historically been seen as follows:

• Reiche and Ford own the entire copyright on Star Control I and II, including
code, story, universe, etc.

• Reiche and Ford own copyright in the characters reused in Star Control III,
but Accolade owned the code and all characters/concepts new to the SC3
universe. (Accolade had to get permission from Reiche and Ford to use their
characters in this game.)

• The name/trademark Star Control has always been owned by Accolade.

• Distribution rights and royalties for SC1 and SC2 were granted to Accolade
for a fixed period of time, or until a fixed period went by with no sales, or
until Accolade ever went bankrupt.

All this was written down in a contract between Reiche/Ford and Accolade
decades ago; the original document is readable in the court filings.

All three of the termination conditions above have since occurred, so Reiche
and Ford claim—correctly, in my layman’s opinion—that the distribution rights
for SC1 and SC2 (except for the name) reverted to them years ago.

When Atari tried to sell SC1, SC2, and SC3 on GOG in 2011, Reiche and Ford
disputed it. Both sides agreed to split revenues equally, and the game went
back up on GOG (see the email chain in
[https://www.dogarandkazon.com/blog/2018/2/27/report-from-
pla...](https://www.dogarandkazon.com/blog/2018/2/27/report-from-planet-
surface)).

But when Stardock tried the same thing on Steam in 2017, relations soured
dramatically, leading to a Stardock lawsuit claiming Reiche and Ford hold _no_
rights and were not the creators, and DMCA takedowns from Reiche and Ford.

~~~
Benjamin_Dobell
After watching that video on the court ruling re: DMCA I agree with you that
it's pretty clear Stardock are in the wrong here. In my comment above I just
wanted to point out it's possible to own IP and distribution rights a
particular media release, without necessarily owning franchise IP and future
distribution rights.

However, it seems that while Stardock supposedly _thought_ they bought the
Star Control (lore) franchise/IP from Atari/Accolade; that's simply not the
case as Atari never owned the franchise, just Star Dock 3 additions to the
franchise and the trademark.

~~~
ninjin
I would have been inclined to give the same charitable interpretation, but
then I stumbled upon this Arstechnica article [1] from the time of the sale
with a quoted statement from the Stardock CEO Brad Wardell:

“We won't be making any changes to the existing Star Control games. And Atari
doesn't actually own the copyright on Star Control 1/2 so it's not like one
could make a Star Control 2 HD or what have you without a license from Paul
Reiche. And even if we did have rights to SC 1/2 I wouldn't touch them without
his blessing.”

[1]: [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/07/stardock-acquires-
sta...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/07/stardock-acquires-star-control-
rights-in-fire-sale-plans-reboot/)

I simply do not know how the interpret the above quote in any other way than
that Stardock was aware that at least some of the rights were retained by Paul
Reiche III at the time of, or immediately following, the purchase from Atari.

------
swivelmaster
Funny story - Zoey Quinn tweeted about this a few months ago, and then
Stardock’s PR guy started trying to argue with her about it (she ignored him),
and then I responded to defend PR and FF, whom I’ve worked with and found to
be absolutely upstanding. Brad Wardell himself jumped in to argue with me,
accused me of libel and said I could be sued, accused me of living out of a
car (???) and then muted me and told someone else in the thread that he had
blocked me and that I was delusional.

So uh... not really making Stardock’s case look better.

~~~
swivelmaster
Sorry about the abbreviations, they’re Paul Reiche and Fred Ford, the creators
of Star Control and founders of Toys for Bob.

(And I missed the edit window for my original post... damn.)

------
Maskawanian
Given StarDock's bait and switch practices when it comes to their
Start10/Object desktop line I have no sympathy for their situation.

More detail is that if you try to purchase Start 10 which is an unlimited
licence, they will try to upsell you to their other object desktop product
which is a 1 year licence without telling you that you will loose access to
the original unlimited product you wanted.

They then ignore you when you reach out to them about this bait and switch.

Never deal with Star Dock.

~~~
sleepybrett
wardell seems like quite a scumbag.

~~~
mcv
He seems to be a genuine fan and gamer with some serious personality issues.

I know him from way back on Usenet (probably comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic
or something like that) when he was working on _Galactic Civilizations_ , and
he was rather insistent that games should be DRM-free, which I really
appreciated. He has some other issues on which I strongly agreed with him.

But as a CEO, he seems to have trouble with the idea that a) not everybody
likes him or what he does, and b) other people have rights too, and they may
conflict with what he might prefer to be true.

And once he gets on the wrong side of an issue, he tends to double down and
make it a bigger problem than it needs to be. I believe there was an issue
with sexual harassment that he reacted really badly to, and now this. And
probably quite a bit more in between.

~~~
sleepybrett
He threatened to shut down stardock before he'd be forced to change his
personality (he claimed it wasn't sexual harrasment, 'just how I am').

------
haspok
Stardock has now changed the first sentence of their original announcement on
Steam, originally it was like "PR and FF, who were _contracted by_ Accolade to
create SC2...".

It seems that we are past the initial anger, because it now reads "PR and FF,
the _designers on_ the classic DOS game...".

If you think the DMCA is an overreaction, just imagine that Stardock legally
questions whether PR and FF are the creators of SC2. Really? That nullifies
any kind of sympathy one might have had towards them.

~~~
anjbe
That questioning of creatorship has been going on for months, and even more
blatantly.

In November of 2017, Stardock made an anniversary blog post downplaying Paul
and Fred’s involvement as creators of Star Control 2.
[https://www.stardock.com/games/article/485810/star-
control-i...](https://www.stardock.com/games/article/485810/star-control-
ii-25th-anniversary---on-the-shoulders-of-giants)

Under normal circumstances, that’s innocuous—nothing more than highlighting
all the people involved in the making of a great game. But even then, Greg
Johnson of Starflight fame, whom I suspect had heard some of the
behind‐the‐scenes goings‐on personally from Paul and Fred at that point,
gently stepped in to reaffirm Paul and Fred’s role as primary creators of both
the original games and the franchise.
[https://forums.stardock.net/485810/star-control-ii-25th-
anni...](https://forums.stardock.net/485810/star-control-ii-25th-anniversary
---on-the-shoulders-of-giants#3699873)

Not even a month later, Stardock filed a lawsuit against Fred and Paul,
containing such incredible allegations as this one:

> …Reiche and Ford have over the course of time and up to now have repeatedly
> held themselves out as the “creators” of Star Control I and Star Control II,
> especially in their marketing, advertising and promotion of the Ghosts of
> Precursors Game… However, Reiche or Ford’s advertising that they are the
> “Creators of Star Control” is false. As Reiche and Ford know, it was
> Accolade, not them that created Star Control I and Star Control II. …Any
> authorship that Reiche and Ford may have contributed to the Classic Star
> Control Games was limited, and it was instead a team of many other authors,
> including numerous artists, animators, musicians, designers and writers,
> among others, that collaborated together to develop creatives used in Star
> Control I and II.

>…Contrary to the common public understanding and what they have portrayed to
the public, Reiche and Ford may not have created _any_ of the artwork,
animation or characters incorporated in the games, or otherwise substantially
contributed to the authorship of Star Control I and Star Control II. Reiche
and Ford’s advertising themselves as being the “creators” of the Classic Star
Control Games is false and misleading, and has been made in an attempt to
dishonestly benefit from the goodwill and reputation associated with the STAR
CONTROL Mark to which they have never had rights.

All of a sudden, what might have been an innocent blog post has an alternate
and much more self‐serving interpretation.

------
eps
Ars has a detailed walkthrough the mess leading to this -
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/star-control-
cou...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/star-control-countersuit-
aims-to-invalidate-stardocks-trademarks/)

------
Pristina
If one can DMCA a launched game, what would stop me from torpedoing a launch
of an AAA title during the first few days after launch? I could do millions in
damage with a single letter with questionable legal standing.

~~~
haspok
This was not a lonely teenager sitting alone in his room trying to hack an
"AAA" title, this was ordered by court, as a legal action as part of an
ongoing case that's been going on for some time.

~~~
anjbe
To be precise, the DMCA takedown wasn’t ordered by a court, but rather, a
preliminary injunction (from Stardock) to _prohibit_ such a takedown was
_rejected_ by the court.
[https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268...](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.320268/gov.uscourts.cand.320268.102.0.pdf)

Gem of a quote from the order:

> …The harm Plaintiff complains of is indeed of its own making. Plaintiff had
> knowledge of Defendants’ copyright claims from the outset. Despite that
> knowledge, it developed potentially infringing material without resolution
> of the IP ownership issues, and then publicized the release of that material
> during the pendency of this action. It now claims that its investment in
> Origins and reputation are on the line. Given that Plaintiff largely created
> the foregoing predicament, the Court is disinclined to extricate Plaintiff
> from a peril of its own making.

