Sequels strife

[krulle]

Should've reloaded the page before amending my post.

You saw the same as I did, and I already corrected myself while I had this tab with the outdated post open in the background.

[Borgie]

Forgive me if this was already made clear: is renaming "Ghosts of the Precursors" due to legal issues (or even because it links to the lawsuit) or because they just didn't like the name?

As for "help with technology", that's extremely vague (and probably on purpose). Technology could be game-engine technology. Or development tools (my guess). Or even computer hardware (this seems unlikely to me). Even dev tools are a vast in scope. Summary: We have no clue what it could mean, unless F&P/Brad have given out more hints.

My own opinion about F&P making no progress... doing nothing with your property doesn't mean it belongs to someone else. As much as I'd love for F&P to make the sequel, we can't just say "you took too long, now it's mine". That's now how ownership of property works. I'm sure there are some legal nuances here, for or against. Once again, my opinion.

Also, Happy New Year everyone!

[Elestan]

Forgive me if this was already made clear: is renaming "Ghosts of the Precursors" due to legal issues (or even because it links to the lawsuit) or because they just didn't like the name?

It's due to legal issues; Stardock was claiming that they had associated the name with Stardock's trademark, and therefore couldn't use it.

Stardock might or might not have won that argument if it had gone to court, but regardless, it was something P&F chose to concede in the settlement.

[Draxas]

My own opinion about F&P making no progress... doing nothing with your property doesn't mean it belongs to someone else. As much as I'd love for F&P to make the sequel, we can't just say "you took too long, now it's mine". That's now how ownership of property works. I'm sure there are some legal nuances here, for or against. Once again, my opinion.

You're right that it doesn't work this way. However, if that interval of doing nothing is long enough (though I'm not sure how long exactly, but I think it's something like 75 years?), there is an argument to be made that the work is now public domain and anyone can use it freely. I'm not sure video games as a medium are even old enough to qualify yet, so that's not really a risk. Trademarks, however, I think will lapse much more quickly (though again, I don't know the specifics and can't even guess in this case).

[Elestan]

if that interval of doing nothing is long enough (though I'm not sure how long exactly, but I think it's something like 75 years?), there is an argument to be made that the work is now public domain and anyone can use it freely.

In the U.S., copyright for joint works or works for hire (which would include SC) lasts for 95 years after first publication. So there's a long time to go.

I would actually prefer that copyright be considerably shorter, but that's what we have right now.

Trademarks need to be renewed every ten years, but the company must keep then in use, or show at least an intent to use them, and has an obligation to defend them (i.e. keep other people from using them), or else they become vulnerable. One of the arguments in the court case was that Atari had neglected the use of the trademark for so long that it lapsed before Stardock bought it.

[krulle]

Copyright for 95 years, lex Disney. (Otherwise the original Mickey Mouse (as depicted in Steamboat Willy) would've become public domain.
The US is an exception for that. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright ... es#History )

It's unusual that a character is being used commercially and successfully over such a long time.
Usually the creator would've been dead and not receive the income anymore.
But ownership by corporations changed that.

[chenjesuwizard]

I'm not sure if people are aware, but P&F have been working on a new game since last autumn! They spoke about it here: https://www.dogarandkazon.com/

They have set up a new sub-reddit to talk about things for the new game: https://www.reddit.com/r/uqm2/

Can we make a new topic about this?

[krulle]

It was mentioned and discussed in the "ZOMG Real UQM2!" thread:
http://star-control.com/community/viewt ... 383#p28383


But thanks for putting it up here too!
(also, feel free to create a thread about anything interesting coming up, e.g. the interface discussions on reddit,...
I'm following it only sparsely, as I am not on reddit)

[chenjesuwizard]

Oh wow, completely missed that!

Unfortunately I can't make posts in Whats News! But it is good to see us excited for it!