Nope and Nope

After declining Stardock’s recent settlement, we offered our own settlement agreement last week.  Paraphrasing from legalese our settlement states…

• Both sides agree not to interfere with each other’s new game development moving forward.
• Both sides agree to contribute SCI, SCII and SC3 to the Ur-Quan Masters open source project for non-commercial use and to stop selling the games through any channels.
• Both side agree not to “pass off” or “free ride” on the other’s good will or reputation.
• Fred and Paul won’t infringe on the Star Dock’s trademark and Stardock won’t infringe on Fred and Paul’s copyrights.
• Fred and Paul won’t challenge Stardock’s trademark registrations for “Star Control” and Stardock will withdraw their recent trademark applications for the “Ur-Quan Masters”, “Super Melee” and other various alien races from the classic games.
• Both sides do their best to avoid confusion as to the origins of their respective new games.
• Both sides will publish an agreeable statement explaining the settlement.
• Neither side will disparage the other.
• Each side will pay their own expenses and attorney’s fees.
• Either side may disclose the final settlement agreement to anyone.

…and it was rejected.  [Is there an emoji for a cute alien that, being rational knew what was going to happen, but being optimistic is still a wee bit disappointed?  If not, there should be.]

On the happier side of life, we sure do appreciate your kind, thoughtful support on Twitter and in an astonishing variety of forums across the internet.  It is fun and informative to read your comments… even the ones that don’t see things exactly the same way we do.

We know some folks question our paraphrasing, so here are the actual proposed settlement agreements in all their gruesome legality.

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Fred and Paul's Proposed Settlement Agreement, March 22, 2018

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Stardock's Proposed Settlement Agreement, March 12, 2018

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Stardock's Proposed Schedule D, initially described to us as an 'apology' that we would need to publish under our own names.

Starship Discovery - Mark II

Here are a few more of Paul's sketches for Star Control 1, including the very first 3 concept images he created to pitch Star Control to Electronics Arts, a few months before approaching Accolade.  While we are certain that everyone loved our last Discovery posting's pages and pages of numbers for palette definitions and image positioning offsets, we've edited those a bit this time around. 

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Starship Discovery II

A second set of Paul's sketches from Star Control 1.

Strange Settlement on an Alien Planet

After reading about the conflict between us and Stardock, several people have asked the reasonable question, "Why can't you guys just work this out?"  In early October 2017 we tried to do just that, exchanging email with Brad Wardell. In these communications, Fred and I defined our idea of a 'win-win' solution...

(Oct. 6, 2017 email from Paul to Brad Wardell)  “… It is important that our players are not confused about which game they are getting, so we need to clearly distinguish our respective projects.  That separation should fall along our respective rights, Stardock having purchased the Star Control trademarks and Fred and I owning all the IP rights to the works we created.

As we've said to you several times over the past years, we do not want Stardock to use any of our IP, and that remains our position today. To avoid consumer confusion, we must also pass on the DLC option you proposed.  Despite your suggestion below, you do not have a license to use our IP. All rights to our work reverted to us long ago. You (and Atari) previously acknowledged same. Further, time and again you have asked for a new license, notwithstanding our consistent rejections.  Kindly do not use our IP in your game. If already added, please remove it before release.

We too wish to see both projects succeed and are confident that with reasonable efforts on our respective parts, we can avoid any perceived conflict or confusion between them. …”

Initially both sides made moves toward compromise.   Our blog now includes the attribution “Star Control is a registered trademark of Stardock Systems, Inc”.  We describe Ghosts of the Precursors™ as “a sequel to the Ur-Quan Masters”.  We no longer use the #starcontrol hashtag.  Stardock removed images of our alien races from their website banner and they changed "SUPER-MELEE" to "Fleet Battles" in Origins.

But earlier this month we received an unfathomable settlement offer from Stardock.  Paraphrasing from legalese, it requires…

1. Fred and Paul must surrender all their IP rights to the classic Star Control games to Stardock.
2. Fred and Paul never again use the words “STAR CONTROL” or “GHOSTS OF THE PRECURSORS” or “THE UR-QUAN MASTERS”.
3. For the next 5 years, Fred and Paul do not work on any game similar to the classic Star Control games.
4. Fred and Paul issue a public apology to Stardock.
5. Fred and Paul never again challenge Stardock’s rights to STAR CONTROL trademark or STAR CONTROL 3 copyright.
6. Fred and Paul pay Stardock $225,000.
7. Fred and Paul never again call themselves the “creators” of the classic Star Control games.

And if their intent wasn’t clear enough, Stardock has now also filed for the trademarks:“The Ur-Quan Masters”, “Melnorme”, “VUX”, Pkunk”, “Ilwrath”, “Chenjesu”, “Androsynth”, “Spathi”,  “SUPER-MELEE”, “Syreen”, “Ur-Quan”, “Orz” and “Yehat”.

Fred and I still believe in the ‘win-win’ scenario for both studios and both games, but given Stardock's recent actions, we seem headed into a world in which many hundreds of hours and many MILLIONS of dollars are spent on legal actions.  Those hours and that money will be lost – not spent on making both games cooler, more beautiful, more fun -- and ultimately that hurts players like you.

All Aboard the Starship Discovery!

Don't let anyone tell you that lawsuits can't be fun -- when else would you get the opportunity to fight off angry bats to pull dusty boxes out of the attic and paw through old drawings, sketches and fairly insane-looking ramblings from over a quarter century past?  Well, after repeated shots from our rescue inhalers, we eventually stopped coughing and thought it might be fun to share an unvarnished look inside the development of Star Control I and Star Control II.  As we scan our old material for Stardock's lawsuit against us we will be posting stuff -- perhaps LOTS of stuff.

The images in the gallery below come from a sketchbook of Paul's which he cleverly titled, "Sketchbook 1", used during the latter phases of developing Star Control I and through the early parts of Star Control II.

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Scrolling View

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Gallery of All Images

Star Control Development Sketchbook #1

Sketchbook 1 was created by Paul Reiche during the last phases of Star Control 1 and the early days of Star Control II.

.... REPORT FROM SURFACE ....

When we are finally past our legal Doctrinal Conflict and are no longer filling our blog with exciting COMPLAINTS and COUNTER-COMPLAINTS, we bet you miss these halcyon days of Courier font and contracts signed when the Soviet Union was still a thing.  Well here is something a bit more recent -- a 2011 email chain between Atari, GOG and ourselves regarding publishing the classic Star Control games on GOG.

Ps. Long, complex email chains and an obsessive relationship with fonts are not a healthy combination, so we've done some formatting work; specifically, we've sequenced the emails in chronological order, removed email addresses and phone numbers, and put everything in a consistent font size and color.  There are a couple of our emails which have headers in a foreign language, which is caused, we think, by copying them from a GOG email reply.  Or Soviet spies -- could be both, actually.

STARDOCK CLAIMS WE ARE NOT THE CREATORS OF STAR CONTROL. SUES US. WTF?!

Stardock filed a complaint in Federal court against us, personally, alleging among other things that we are not actually the creators of Star Control.  This is news to us!  Are we clones of the original Fred and Paul, just now learning of our squelchy vat birth?   Unfortunately, Stardock’s complaint is not a prank – so, today we took action and filed a response in Federal court answering Stardock's false claims.  Of course, we've also filed counterclaims against Stardock, as the original Fred and Paul would have wanted.  Read the background here.

Star Control® I, II and III aren't for sale on GOG.com anymore -- How come?

We've decided to stop selling our old games, because:

1. We think it's necessary to 'clear the decks' to help resolve our definitely-not-harmonious, until-recently-private, months-long conflict with Brad Wardell and his lawyers at Stardock.   
2. The Ur-Quan Masters HD Project is a free, vastly superior experience.  Did we mention it's free?  Fans have been dedicated to improving UQM for 15 years and it is awesome!  Hopefully Star Control I and III will also become available for free in the near future.

Why was it okay to sell the games on GoG, but not on Steam or elsewhere?

The simple answer is because we have had our own direct distribution agreement with GOG since 2011 and no agreement with Stardock or Steam or anyone else.  If you're into details, here goes:

• In April 2011, we learned that Star Control I, II and III had been re-published on Good Old Games (GOG) — a big surprise since the games hadn’t been sold for years and no one had contacted us for permission to do so.  
• We reached out to GOG who said our games had been offered to them by Atari as part of a large batch of older Atari products.  We then contacted Atari to let them know that we were the original authors and owners of the copyright to the games and that we had not given permission for them to republish our work.   Atari checked with its lawyers and wrote back confirming our claims, apologizing to everyone for the mistake and informing GOG to remove the games from sale and pay any royalties earned to us. 
• Instead we suggested a way that GOG could continue to sell our games.  GOG signed separate, independent contracts with: Atari to license the Star Control trademark, and us to license the rights to the games themselves.  GOG has been selling the games and paying us directly ever since.
• In October of this year, history repeated itself when Stardock began selling our games on Steam and elsewhere (even bundled with theirs), again without getting our permission.  This time we couldn't come to an agreement, so we asked that Stardock stop bundling and selling the games. They refused, so we've decided to end our 2011 distribution agreement with GOG as a first step to having the games pulled down.

“THERE WERE MANY GREAT BATTLES... AND SOME OF THEM INVOLVED LAWYERS.”

Unfortunately there appears to be a growing legal conflict between us and Stardock. We started out confused at what Stardock said and did.  We tried to be reasonable and settle the problem quietly, but now after months of debate we are flat out mad!  First, a little background information on just our side of the story:

• In 2013, Stardock bought a limited set of Atari’s assets at a bankruptcy auction -- primarily the name and trademark Star Control® and certain original aspects of Star Control III, like the space cows. It’s our opinion that Atari’s rights to publish our earlier games terminated over a decade before the auction and we contend that Stardock has zero rights to our games, including any code and other IP we created.  

• As far as we can currently tell, we have no relationship with Stardock that lets them sell the three earlier Star Control games without our permission, either bundled with their other products or separately. That permission has not been given.  

• Despite what Stardock's Brad Wardell has recently said, including in this Ars Technica article, our games’ universe has absolutely no connection, hyper-dimensional or otherwise, with Star Control®: Origins. (Note: We really don’t like other people putting our names in their diagrams without asking us first.)

Stardock now seems to think that not only can they use our aliens, ships and narrative without our permission, but thinks that we cannot make a sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters without their permission -- this is where we got really, really angry.

When we started Ghosts of the Precursors™ we were looking forward to spending our time on fun, creative work, not fighting a legal battle to protect ourselves and our work. We have nothing but respect for the talented, passionate developers working on Star Control: Origins, but we apparently have a BIG problem right now with Stardock’s management.  We’ve been waiting 25 years to make Ghosts of the Precursors for our fans and we certainly won’t let this stop us.  Go! Go! Go!

LAUNCH FIGHTERS!

It was almost exactly 25 years ago that we released The Ur-Quan Masters for DOS PCs.  We poured our hearts into the game, blending our love for classic science fiction, Spacewar!-style action gameplay and our own quirky sense of humor.  We had tons of help from many talented friends and collaborators, but even so getting the game across the finish line was a herculean effort -- both the exciting, hydra-fighting kind, as well as the exhausting stable-cleaning kind.   Pretty much ever since then, fans have been politely asking us to create a sequel, sometimes begging for a sequel, even threatening us if we don’t make a sequel.  Our answer was always, “We really want to do this, we just need to wait until the time is right” -- kind of like Cthulhu awakening, but less end-of-the-worldy.  Well, the stars have finally aligned -- we are now working on a direct sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters, called Ghosts of the Precursors™.  

This is a passion project for us and we have committed to dedicating some of our own time to creating a true sequel.  We are early, early in development, but rest assured, the game will include genuine Ur-Quan, Precursors, Super-Melee, Umgah, VUX, Supox, THE ULTRON!, Druuge, Arilou Lalee'lay, Orz, Androsynth, Rainbow Worlds,  Ilwrath, Syreen, Mmrnmhrm, Yehat, Shofixti, Spathi (including the ever-terrified Fwiffo), Umgah, Melmorme, Chmmr, Earthlings, Mycon, THE MARK II!, Slylandro, Utwig, Thraddash, Zoq-Fot-Pik, VUX Beast, Pkunk, the Keel-Verezy, and of course all new alien races to discover, befriend ...and/or be annigilate... I mean annihigate.. Damn!  Well, you get the idea.