Star Control: Origins Is Gone From Steam Due To A DMCA Claim!

General news News 01/02/2019

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Although on GOG, the revived Star Control‘s new instalment is still available, from Steam, it was pulled due to a DMCA claim.

Who are behind the DMCA takedown? The designers of Star Control 2, called Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford. Brad Wardell, the CEO of Stardock (who own the Star Control IP, and the rights to Star Control 3), has written a detailed post on Steam:

„[…] Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford, the designers of Star Control 2 have issued a DMCA takedown notice to Valve to take down Star Control: Origins. This is the one sent to GOG. […] There is a legal dispute between Stardock and Reiche and Ford regarding the trademarks and copyrights of Star Control. You can read the history here.

Rather than relying on the legal system, they have chosen to bypass it by issuing vague DMCA take-down notices to Steam and GOG (who, by the way, Reiche and Ford are suing using GoFundMe money). Steam and GOG both have a policy of taking down content that receives DMCA notices regardless of the merits of the claims.

We attempted to get a preliminary art injunction to prevent them from issuing more false DMCA takedown notices. Unfortunately, the court ruled that it wasn’t the court’s place to intervene in the area of DMCAs. […]

Never in the history of our industry has anyone attempted to use the DMCA system to take down a shipping game before. For example, when PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds sued Fortnite for copyright infringement, they didn’t try to take Fortnite down with a DMCA notice. […] You CANNOT copyright ideas, individual or short phrases, concepts, mechanics, game designs, etc.

Star Control: Origins is our own creation without relying on the work of Reiche or Ford. We spent five years working on it making it our own game. […] It has its own story, setting, plot, and all new characters […] in an entirely new universe. Stardock owns the trademark to Star Control and the copyright to Star Control 3. Even if Reiche and Cord state they own the copyrights to SC2, that has nothing to do with us or our game. […] Valve assures us that anyone who has already bought the game should be able to continue to play it. Unfortunately, without the income from Star Control: Origins, Stardock will have to lay off some of the men and women who are assigned to the game. […]”

The situation is somewhat strange, but it looks like Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford doesn’t like that someone made a new game in an old franchise…

Source: WCCFTech

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