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!
