The ongoing legal disputes between Stardock Corporation and Star Control II creators Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford over the recently released Star Control: Origins appear to have reached some kind of resolution. A few weeks ago the whole thing reached a whole new level of weird as the game was completely removed from sale on various stores following the filing of a DMCA takedown notice by the two embattled game devs.
Today, it seems as though things might be starting to cool, as a notice was posted on the Steam Community page for the game, announcing an agreement to bring the title back to Steam.
Stardock and Valve are happy to report that Star Control: Origins is back on Steam!
For those of you who have the game already we encourage you to review it as we took some review bombing recently.
Please spread the word!
Gamers are no doubt very happy if they were looking to get in on some Star Control: Origins action. Current CEO of Stardock, Brad Wardell, issued a simple statement basically outlining that the whole issue was seemingly down to choices made by Reiche and Ford. How this actually all renders out the ongoing legal disputes is unknown, but it’s reasonable to expect things to get weirder before this all blows over.
And just to offer a basic refresher for those not aware, the timeline goes something like this. The kerfuffle is based on the allegations from Star Control II creators Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford that Star Control: Origins infringes upon the original IP of Star Control II, even going so far as to steal ideas and aspects which should be protected under the letter of the law.
The back-and-forth nature of these kinds of lawsuits has led to a lot of filings and some speculation as to which party has the correct legal backing. If you’d like to see more detailed rundowns of the case, check out Leonard French’s coverage on the Stardock suits.
