Stardock is remaking Star Control!

Brad has done shady legal things to friends of mine in the past, so I'm not on the fence at all.

I'll just toss more money at the Fig crowdfunding for Starflight 3 instead.

I too am passing for ethical reasons. They've already had DLC taken down because of Stardock violating some rules. There's been discussion of a possible settlement in the case, but Paul and Fred successfully used a DMCA claim to get some DLC removed.

To me it means Stardock stopped acting in good faith and now I absolutely won't be supporting them in any way. It was one thing when it was just Brad Wardell being a jerk to people online and another thing when his company is making art assets and gameplay that was pretty clearly in violation of the copyright they acquired.

Let's not forget about the harassment of his own employees.

On the one hand I loath Brad and have never liked him since I first saw his posts on Qt3, but on the other hand I don’t want to punish all the developers and artists who worked hard on this game just because they have a scum bag for a boss. I’ll probably wait for a sale and some reviews. One person on Qt3 with a much beefier system than mine mentioned the frame rate wasn’t the greatest, so I may wait until I can upgrade my computer.

Im def siding with Fred and Paul, at the very least until the next round of court proceedings in October. In my mind Stardock admitted they were running a scan and losing when they pulled the Arilou and Chenjesu DLC.

My stance is "when GotP has a go ahead, i'll give money to stardock again," I am curious to hear how the actual gameplay is on this though.

Politics, personalities and Legalities aside, I've always found Stardock to be a weird duck. All of their games sound like they'll be awesome on paper, before they're released. However I have yet to see any moderate success stories out of them.
I suppose that the GalCiv series has a pretty good following, but I haven't actually played any of those, and from memory they didn't create them, just published them (or is my memory faulty here?)

Buzzrick wrote:

I suppose that the GalCiv series has a pretty good following, but I haven't actually played any of those, and from memory they didn't create them, just published them (or is my memory faulty here?)

No, they created them. Brad made the first precursor of GavCiv for OS/2, where it was apparently a big deal (partially because there weren't many other games of OS/2). The first Windows version was a remake of that game, and came out in 2003. 2003 was a good year to release space 4X games, because there was pent-up demand. Master of Orion 3 came out that same year, but was a dismal failure, so GalCiv became the best option for a 4X game. I haven't played the series, but the AI was supposed to be good.

I don't really think Stardock has ever managed to replicate that success; their internal development list is actually really short. They've published a bunch of games, but the GalCiv, The Political Machine, and Elemental series are most of the games they've developed themselves.

I've watched the first couple of Veloxi's SGJ videos for SC Origins, and I have to admit that the game looks more interesting & fun that I expected.

That said, I still don't see myself buying it any time soon for many of the reasons listed above. Maybe I'll reconsider that after the dust settles between Stardock and Paul & Fred.

Glycerine wrote:

On the one hand I loath Brad and have never liked him since I first saw his posts on Qt3, but on the other hand I don’t want to punish all the developers and artists who worked hard on this game just because they have a scum bag for a boss.

Yes, this is a good description of how I feel about this whole thing.

Hrdina wrote:

I've watched the first couple of Veloxi's SGJ videos for SC Origins

Thank you for watching!

Sweet jeezus, Stardock is really leaning into this, ensuring they have the Star Control name even in Galactic Civ III. https://www.stardock.net/article/491942

I thought GalCiv 2 was an outstanding 4x game. I'm playing ES2 now because Stardock.

So if this was anybody but Stardock...

Paul Reiche and Fred Ford issue DMCA take down

Hurray! Talk about a case of crybabyitis in that post.

Excellent news. Hopefully since the legal findings Reiche and Ford can sue for whatever money Stardock made from illegally using their IP.

The case isn't over yet--this was just the preliminary injunction. That said, the judge smacked Stardock down pretty hard.

Brad wrote:

Star Control: Origins does not contain any copyrighted work of Reiche or Ford.

The flood of "Look at this Zoq Fot Pit planet that mentions the Zebranky by name" posts and the arilou and Chejessu stuff say different.

If Brad Wardell weren't such an unrepentant unmitigated asshole, I might feel sorry for him. Atari really did sell them a pig in a poke. It's just a shame he tried to pass off the mutt he got as prime pork, and I hope and expect he gets slapped down hard for it.

IANAL and this might be cherry picked, but I think Stardock might be in trouble...

Injunction Junction Dogar and Kazon Blog Post

Oh, not cherry picked at all, if you read the entire thing it was a giant slap to Stardock. The only part that went against F&R was that the judge complained everyone's lawyers were writing too much (12 pages instead of three pages).

garion333 wrote:

Oh, not cherry picked at all, if you read the entire thing it was a giant slap to Stardock. The only part that went against F&R was that the judge complained everyone's lawyers were writing too much (12 pages instead of three pages).

Oh i was only referring to the SG2 SG3 SGO comparison chart afa cherrypicking, yea stardock got a serious slapdown in the response to their injunction.

I just got an email from Stardock offering 50% off SC:O through their site for a steam key. That’s one way around the DMCA I guess?

What a piece of sh*t. More ammunition for the court case though.

If they were willing to slash that much off the price, would it have killed them to offer 10% in royalties to the IP owners?

Nothing gave me more pleasure than reading that document and seeing that bullying, misogynistic, right-wing piece of sh*t Wardell get at least a small taste of what he deserves.

LarryC wrote:

If they were willing to slash that much off the price, would it have killed them to offer 10% in royalties to the IP owners?

It would utterly shatter Brad Wardell's world view that the universe revolves around him and he can get whatever he wants by being enough of a bully about it. His fragile masculinity definitely wouldn't be able to take it, and I am eagerly awaiting the public misogynist/racist meltdown in a few months when the actual court case slaps him down hard.

I feel really bad for the people working at Stardock, since there aren't a lot of other studios in that part of Michigan.

Has anything happened regarding the court case so far? I ask because when I turned on Steam today it was splashing Star Control right on the front page, it's back up for sale apparently.

When you file a DMCA and stuff gets pulled, the other side can file an appeal or whatever and once that's filed the content can go back up. Typical stuff. Steam and GOG are just following suit based on the filings.

Meaning, nothing to see here, move along. Unless you're Brad Wardell who is making it seem like Steam and GOG are on his side. At this point all Brad seems to have is PRing his way to a win, but so far the courts haven't bought into that, thank gawd.

It looks like Stardock worked out an indemnification agreement with steam and gog that got origins back up for sale.

There was also a new bit in the P&F GOG case that basically shows that GOG either inadvertently (gog's attempted explination) or deliberately (P&F's position) hid the fact of the expiration of the licence agreement between atari and GOG in 06 (i think?) which lead to P&F selling SC1&2 on gog potentially against the interest of the new trademark holder Stardock. GOG is choosing not to dispute that P&F were not informed of the licence change, only whether it was deliberate or not. This reflects on the stardock v P&F case because a large portion of stardocks complaint is predicated on P&F knowingly selling SC1&2 in violation stardock's trademark.

Gotcha. Stardock said they'd pay anything back to Steam/GOG if it turns out Stardock loses all rights to publish Star Control Origns. Interesting.