Cynical hates on NIghtdive Studio

[Cynical]

Buying dead IPs as it happens in the US today is a fine example of how copyright laws have been perverted and now do exactly what they originally were supposed to prevent.  The goal was to convince people to make new things, not to buy dead properties from obscure owners and then rent-seek on them.

[Gez]

3 minutes ago, Cynical said:

The goal was to convince people to make new things, not to buy dead properties from obscure owners and then rent-seek on them.

If that were true, they would just have been patents instead of copyright. Copyright is entirely about rent, what with its terms being designed to last for two generations after the death of the author.

[[McD] James]

 

[Cynical]

2 minutes ago, Gez said:

If that were true, they would just have been patents instead of copyright. Copyright is entirely about rent, what with its terms being designed to last for two generations after the death of the author.

Copyright wasn't designed to last that long.  Term of copyright was 14 years until Walt Disney sent a bunch lobbyists to go bribe Congress to make it longer so he could make more money.

[Xcalibur]

I'm not familiar with the situation, so I can't weigh in on the details. However, I will say that there's alot of foolishness out there, such as shady crowdsourcing and capricious cease&desists against fan-made passion projects. maybe there's nothing wrong with this situation, but given the history I mentioned, I can understand why you might be... cynical.

[Sparktimus]

7 hours ago, Xcalibur said:

I'm not familiar with the situation, so I can't weigh in on the details. However, I will say that there's alot of foolishness out there, such as shady crowdsourcing and capricious cease&desists against fan-made passion projects. maybe there's nothing wrong with this situation, but given the history I mentioned, I can understand why you might be... cynical.

Considering that in this case the "fan-made passion project" was illegal warez with shoddy mouselook implementation and was made years before the Enhanced Edition made it obsolete, there's hardly anything to complain about here other than the fact that a free version of the exact same game was taken off the Internet, something that most every game company would do.

At this point, this reads less like an argument about copyrights and more like unfounded rhetoric that all game companies are evil and just want to make life worse for us gamers. In this case, that could not be farther from the truth. Mod support, higher resolutions, more stable engine, open source. These are things we were never ever going to get as long as the IP belonged to some nameless insurance company. Now, if someone wanted, they could basically remake System Shock Portable exactly the way it was originally but with even better improvements. I cannot see how this is a bad thing. I cannot for the life of me reason why it would've been better that System Shock die out instead of this. The only argument I am seeing from Cynical here is that a game company has it now and is reselling it when Portable let you have a gimped version for free.

[Xcalibur]

^I see. in that case, it sounds like there's no foul being committed here. while I disagree with clamping down on fair use/non-profit fan works, purging a warez version of the exact same game you're now selling is a different matter and totally justifiable. naturally, game companies need to defend their bread & butter, and it's not an overreach to do that.

[OliveTree]

11 hours ago, Cynical said:

Buying dead IPs as it happens in the US today is a fine example of how copyright laws have been perverted and now do exactly what they originally were supposed to prevent.

No. One. Involved. With. The. Creation. Of. System. Shock. Died.

 

Fucking hell, Warren Spector is in pre-production for System Shock 3. It's not like the System Shock IP would have been in the public domain if not for ND swooping in and stealing it.

[Cynical]

Again, it wasn't until Walt Disney lobbied Congress in the early 20th century that anyone had to die for copyright to expire.  Originally, to claim copyright protection, you had to have filed a bunch of paperwork when the work was first released, and it expired after 14 years even if you were still alive and still selling it.

 

SS wouldn't have been in the public domain, but the fanbase was in a better place under the benign neglect of EA than it is currently.

[OliveTree]

Why is this Night Dive's fault. By your own admission, every other major studio would do exactly the same thing.

 

Id Software would do the same thing. Certainly Bethesda as well.

[Cynical]

Define "every other major studio"; EA owned it for years and didn't.

[OliveTree]

Ah I understand. If only ND had been more like EA, so we could finally have a good honest game studio.

 

EA did nothing with the System Shock ip other than hoard it like all their other ips. That's far scummier than actually releasing a source port and giving the rights for a sequel to the original creator...something that EA also never did, despite owning it for years.

 

EDIT: simplified my point.

[Edward850]

4 hours ago, EtherBot said:

EA did nothing with the System Shock ip other than hoard it like all their other ips. That's far scummier than actually releasing a source port and giving the rights for a sequel to the original creator...something that EA also never did, despite owning it for years.

And also released the source code recently, something EA doesn't have a known track record for. 

[FractalBeast]

They sort of released the source code for Dune 2, C&C, Red Alert and Dune 2000. Although that might just be a case of overeager fans tracking down the source code, sharing it around the community, and EA not giving a shit about it.

 

IIRC, there's a source port of Dune 2 (with an enhanced modded version) and OpenRA is a total rebuild of C&C, Red Alert and Dune 2000 on a modern engine.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Distributing a full game is DEFINITELY not a case of fair use.

[Gez]

3 hours ago, FractalBeast said:

They sort of released the source code for Dune 2, C&C, Red Alert and Dune 2000. Although that might just be a case of overeager fans tracking down the source code, sharing it around the community, and EA not giving a shit about it.

 

They did? As far as I know, things like DuneLegacy or OpenRA are game engine recreations, not based on any released source code. If the actual source code from the actual games was actually leaked at some point, then I'd be curious to see it -- or at least some forum thread where people discuss the leak.

[fraggle]

21 hours ago, EtherBot said:

Why on earth is it inherently bad to buy a game's IP? I swear this whole thread reads like complete actual nonsense.

A good summary, and from what we've seen I  don't think this thread is likely to become any more coherent. Let's move on.