that would be very expensive publicity....

I believe this scenario you are describing is actually one in which Stardock has no interest in compromise and gets about everything it has asked for. An actual compromise might also include Stardock giving P&F the right to call their game Star Control: Ghosts of the Precursors plus an agreement that sees all rights ceded to P&F after a reasonable number of years, for example.

Stardock getting everything it wants does not need to be a terrible thing.  They initially tried to license the rights to the original aliens.

If the agreement that is forged maintains the Alien names and distinctive natures as property of Paul and Fred and the Star Control TM property of  Stardock, a cross licensing agreement where Paul and Fred are paid by SD for the right to use the Names/races could actually fund Paul and Fred's Game.

Paul and Fred then publish using the Star Control: Ghosts of the Precurser's name  and pay SD for the right to use the Trademark, or have Stardock be the publisher and not even need to worry about paying for the TM.   In the end the fans would get two games.  Paul and Fred would get to keep their story, and StarDock would get get something out of spending 5 years reviving was was basically a "dead and forgotten my most" game series.

One side does not need to lose.   All sides can still win.

I'd rather have three winners.

One of the reasons why GyGax got ousted from TSR though was because he insisted that the authors of the individual works own the Copyrights directly and none of them transfer to TSR.

Gygax could not make a competing game system, but the novels and stories within the greyhawk setting were always his and his alone and only licensed to TSR for publishing.      So it is similar but not the same as the current Star Control dispute

Guessing  you are getting the brad thinks Paul and Fred thought the game would fail thing from either Reddit or Discord?

I hate discord....       rolling chat that if you look away for 10 minutes you can never find anything.


I've read all the publicly posted emails between Brad and Paul and Fred.   It seems that they (P&F) were very very supportive early on, though clear that they could not work with the project in any way due to their contract with Activision.

Things only turned hostile last Sept...        No where in any of that does it look like they were expecting SC:O to fail or doing anything but being supportive of the new project.

So yeah I do think that when they made the GotP announcement Brad tried to spin it as a positive (his initial posts to the media and even on this site where super super supportive)   and then things just turned.... mean.             Either there is a LOT of stuff that has not been made public, or something cause up until Dec it really looked like we'd have two games that mutually acknowledged each other and could happily co-exist.

Now.....   yuck

Oh, the subsequent TM fillings for the alien names etc are a bunch of Bunk.

SD is playing dirty pool without a doubt.

I'm just saying that Paul and Fred were the ones that filled the pool with manure to begin with.   

I don't expect SD to win all of their points cause some of them are flat out ludicrous. 


But from what i've Seen in my own reviews of all of the documents of the case... Paul and Fred brought all of this down on themselves in a fit of spite and pettynes         Remove SC:O from the picture entirely for a moment  lets say SD bought the rights to the game and spent money developing the game but much like Elemental, their goals were not something they could do....   SD has cancelled game projects that were not working  even ones late in development..  (Servo)  Say SD cancelled or greatly delayed development of SC:O

When in that picture do you see an announcement of GotP?

My guess is never.      Words are cheap and easy...  actions matter.   Paul and Fred's actions seem lacking.

If that were really the case answer me this...

Why do they not have a story plan or game design elements already made?   They told to the Judge they have none.
if the Trademark was not valuable to them why market it as the Sequel to SC?
Why officially announce the game RIGHT before StarDock's marketing blitz for SC:O  which Paul and Fred knew the dates and plans of because SD had given them that info.

Paul and Fred would have lost nothing by waiting until  A.  They had the game elements and had stuff to show people.   B  They could have named it anything and people would recognize it, also at that time SD would have done a cross promotion and let them call it SC: GotP probably for free.  and C.  Whether SC:O is a major success or a flop getting the public awareness would have been free advertising and awareness for their game.

Paul and Fred had nothing to gain by the timing of what they did and a lot to lose and that they have NOTHING other than a few press releases and bad blood with Stardock really says something.     

I don't understand how people are so forgiving of them....    What did they do to earn such blind loyalty?    Cause they sure seem to be pissing on their own chances of giving you anything new.

* In ¶61-63,93, they claim that the fact that Paul hasn't worked on the game during the litigation shows that he never intended to start work on it.  I think this claim is to try to refute an intent to use the "Ghosts of the Precursors" mark by Paul, but I can't believe that getting dragged into litigation wouldn't be considered good cause to have delayed that work.

Elistan glosses over something that I think the fans on this page should find paticularly damning towards Paul and Fred.

these points come from the Discovery period in which Paul and Fred were tasked with supplying documentation of work done on their new game so as to disprove the Stardock claim that the timing of the announcement of GotP was not simply made only to negatively impact SC:O before their beta launched.

As of May of this year zero story or design elements or productive work has been done on GotP.

Elistan is far far more forgiving than he should be.   If GotP was truly the passion project that Paul and Fred claim it to be, they should have had those elements designed in their free time YEARS ago.      That they had nothing, and still have nothing is insulting.

The fans here at UQM have spent more energy on SC than Paul and Fred have.         

I'm no fan of what SD has done with their lawsuit, but honestly Paul and Fred brought it on themselves.   

One thing to note however,

One of the allegations that Stardock has put forth in their lawsuit is that Paul and Fred are more concerned with PR smear campaigns then actual communication and the timing of their communications was designed to cost SD sales of SC:O 

By trying to organize any sort of boycott and or review bomb while voicing support for Paul and Fred, you are in essence proving at least one part of Stardock's allegations to be true.

I'm sure Paul and Fred are glad they have the support from the majority of the folks on this page, but I would bet a fairly large sum of money that screen shots of the discussions on this forum have and will be used as examples of how Paul and Fred have stirred the pot to create a toxic fan base.

Elastan will argue that Stardock created it's own toxic environment, and I agree whole heartedly that they have played very dirty this year as this fight has become personal for Brad.    However, I would argue based on what Paul and Fred have done that it always was personal and was never professional for them.    Chicken and the Egg argument.    In the end the courts will decide.   I just caution folks not to fall into doing exactly what Stardock has claimed Paul and Fred are wanting fans to do.

Can't we all just get along?

Innteresting...

Looks like they removed the Spathi and Ur-Quan ship models that used to hang behind Tywom

If this were a kickstarter to fund the game development I'd totally donate.

But I really don't feel good about donating to support a legal team when early posts on their own board seemed to indicate that they expected and even wanted a legal battle.

Had Paul and Fred simply titled their game as Ghosts of the Precursors and never referenced or used the Star Control name what Lakstoties says would probably be true.

The issue is they called it the Sequel to Star Control  without stating that SC is R Stardock, so now everyone links GotP with SC directly and there is a confusion in the market which is exactly what a Trademark is intended to prevent.

** the power of friendship yadda yadda yadda**

and I can now see someone making a MLP custom race with the race/ship generator, and this thought is unnerving.    Twich  Twich 

hmmm,

Yeah I didn't mean to come off that way but I can see how that was read.  I did the "your" because the poster heavily implied he/she were posting on SD's behalf but didn't flat out say it.     And yes I do see now that there is an account with the same name over at SD's main forums.   I honestly thought it was just a cleaver name specifically for this forum since they  had never posted before (not that I can say much as my first posts were only a week or so back)

I'll try to better control my tone.

Well I wasn't meaning to be provacative.

I actually thought that whoever the poster from StarDock is, they chose their name with a bit of wisdom and the ability to laugh at themselves as there is a schism, but in the end I think we all just want to see the games made and play them so all of us would like to navigate and end the schism.

tl:dr   I found their name to be clever.