From: Paul Reiche Date: April 19, 2011 7:12:34 PM GMT+02:00 To: "" <inquiries@gog.com> Subject: game developer: Star Control publication Reply-To: Paul Reiche Hi, I am Paul Reiche, developer and owner of Star Control and Star Control II, along with Fred Ford. I see that you are offering a Star Control package for sale. I want to understand what exactly you are selling, because I am concerned that you are selling our work without our permission and without compensation. Please contact me as soon as you can. I hope this is a misunderstanding and won't require further action. Sincerely, - Paul Reiche
From: Oleg Klapovsky Date: April 20, 2011 at 1:22:42 AM PDT To: Paul Reiche Cc: Trevor Longino Subject: Re: game developer: Star Control publication Hi Paul, It is a pleasure to meet you. You are absolutely right we are offering DOS version of Star Control Collection (Star Control + Star Control II). We've signed these titles from Atari recently. We were absolutely sure they had all the rights to sell us the license to distribute these games digitally. Please let me know if Atari doesn’t have such rights (or part of it) cause we'll have to clarify this case with them asap. At the same time we'll be more then willing to discuss the current situation with you and try to find the best possible solution that will suit both sides. Thanks for understanding. Oleg Best regards, _______________________________ Oleg Klapovsky Head of Business Development
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From: Oleg Klapovsky Date: April 20, 2011 at 12:20:14 PM PDT To: Paul Reiche Cc: Oleg Klapovsky Subject: Re: game developer: Star Control publication Hi Paul, Would you be so kind to confirm receipt of my previous e-mail? The problem is that sometimes e-mails from gog mailbox go to spam folders of yahoo and gmail mail-boxes. Thanks in advance. Oleg
From: Paul Reiche Date: April 21, 2011 at 11:20:09 PM PDT To: Oleg Klapovsky Cc: Oleg Klapovsky, Fred Ford Subject: Re: game developer: Star Control publication Thanks so much for getting back to me, Oleg. Atari did this once before, attempting to sell Star Control I &II through Steam. Would you be so kind as to send me the name of the person at Atari with whom you deal? We'll work it out. In any event, Fred and I always appreciate seeing our work back out in the public, so we're glad that you are thinking of us. Warmly, - Paul
From: Oleg Klapovsky Date: Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 11:43 PM Subject: Re: game developer: Star Control publication To: Paul Reiche Cc: Fred Ford Hi Paul, It is a pity to hear such situation already happened in the past. I didn't know about it. Our primary contact at Atari regarding day-to-day operations is Kelsey A. Musgrave. I also informed her about this situation and she promised to double-check everything with her Legal. I hope this problem will be solved. We've received lots of e-mails from users who were looking for these games for quite a long time and now they are happy to be able to play these games again. We are open for any and all discussions with both parties to keep these titles on GOG. Just one proposal as an idea – if it comes that the rights for SC products are shared between you and Atari (like you own the code and they own the IP), probably we can just split royalties for these products between both sides? Anyways I look forward to getting your feedback regarding this case. P.S. Many thanks to you and Fred for such great games! Best regards, Oleg
From: Paul Reiche Sent: Friday, April 22, 2011 4:47 PM To: Kelsey A. Musgrave Cc: Oleg Klapovsky; Fred Ford Subject: Star Control I & II publication via GoG. Hi Kelsey, Oleg Klapovsky gave me your contact information in regards to Atari's agreement with his company, GoG, to sell versions of Star Control I & II. Fred Ford and I are the original authors and owners of these products and we have not given permission for Atari or anyone else to sell this creative work. Accolade once held the publishing rights, but those rights lapsed many years ago. In fact, we were contacted by a representative of Atari several years ago in regards to a similar deal, where Star Control I & II would
have been sold through Steam, but we were unable to come to an agreement. To be clear, we have not and do not give Atari permission to publish our creative work. Atari does not have the right to make agreements concerning our creative work and any such agreements that presently exist violate Fred and my exclusive rights to our work. There are a few alternative solutions: 1 Any agreement between Atari and GoG regarding our work can be canceled. 2 Any agreement between Atari and GoG relating to our work may be transferred, so that Fred and I are in a direct relationship with GoG. 3 Atari can negotiate an agreement with Fred and I to gain the rights to publication of our work. Please let us know how you would like to proceed. Sincerely, - Paul Reiche III
From: Kelsey A. Musgrave To: Paul Reiche Cc: Oleg Klapovsky; Fred Ford Sent: Mon, April 25, 2011 3:42:31 PM Subject: RE: Star Control I & II publication via GoG. Hi Paul, I had our attorney check this out and you are correct. I sincerely apologize for this mistake. We have a standard rights clearance process, but apparently our legal team was misled by the title of the game. We are sending a hard copy of the official product removal notice out to GOG tomorrow to have the title taken down so it will no longer be sold through Atari on GOG. I don’t believe that we can transfer the agreement to you, so it is probably easiest to work out an agreement directly between your company and GOG. Hi Oleg, Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I apologize to your team as well for this mistake. We are usually very careful about rights clearance as you are aware of (i.e. painfully long Hasbro approval process). You will soon be receiving the product removal notice for the Star Control games, however, if GOG can take the game down sooner or work out an agreement directly with Paul’s company, that would be great. Revenues from sales of the Star Control titles on GOG should be remitted to Paul’s company. Thanks,
Kelsey Musgrave Digital Distribution Analyst | Atari, Inc. | 1640 S Sepulveda Blvd., Ste 300, Los Angeles, CA 90025
From: Oleg Klapovsky To: Paul Reiche Cc: Fred Ford Sent: Tue, April 26, 2011 2:59:30 AM Subject: Re: Star Control I & II publication via GoG. Hi Paul, It is good to see situation is getting clear. Let me apologize for it, but as you can see we were acting according to our agreement with Atari and didn't want to harm you. Will be glad to work directly with you on Star Control games. If you don't mind, I'll make a summary of our current agreement with Atari on your games and send it for your review tomorrow. Based on your feedback we'll be able to proceed with the paper work. There are just a few things I wanted to clarify with you. Do you own full rights (including the rights on the name) on all Star Control games (including the 3rd part)? We definitely want to keep Star Control name for these games, cause without is sales potential is much less. So in case you own the code and Atari owns the trademarks, probably we can split revenues between you and them? Anyways – I'll be waiting for your reply on my first questions now, to see what potential problems we can face here. Many thanks, Oleg
От: Paul Reiche Дата: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 09:53:55 -0700 (PDT) Кому: Oleg Klapovsky Копия: Fred Ford Тема: Re: Star Control I & II publication via GoG. Hi Oleg, We would love for fans to buy and play the game through your service, so it would be great to get the terms you had with Atari. Atari does possess the trademarks and holds part of the copyright to Star Control III, so Fred and I think it would be fair to split any revenues with them. The only other issue for us is that we do not want to unintentionally
limit the fan work on The Ur-Quan Masters open source projects. How does that sound? - Paul
From: Oleg Klapovsky To: Paul Reiche Cc: Fred Ford Sent: Wed, April 27, 2011 1:30:34 AM Subject: Re: Star Control I & II publication via GoG. Hi Paul, So to make it simple – we had the following terms with Atari on Star Control games: Star Control Collection (Star Control + Star Control II). SRP - $5.99 Star Control III. SRP --$5.99 Royalties: 50% from Net Revenue. (Where Net Revenue is - GOG's gross revenue less any applicable taxes, chargeback's and up to 10% of gross revenue for affiliates (only for actual purchases obtained through affiliates)) GOG is responsible for all re-mastering for modern operating systems compatibility, QA, customer and tech support. So in case you own all the rights for Star Control Collection (including all trademarks, etc.) - I'll be happy to suggest you the same terms we had with Atari (see above). With regards to Star Control III where the rights are split, I suggest we pay 25% to you and 25% to Atari. With regards to UQM – I don't see any problems with community developing this project. Even more, if you don't mind we can add UQM as a bonus for the users who purchased Star Control collection. This way they'll be able to play original DOS version of the game and upgraded UQM. Of course we'll update version of UQM on our server from time to time as you have very active community and new masters appear almost every week :). Let me know what do you think about it? If you are fine – I'll send you our standard draft of the agreement for review. Best regards, Oleg
От: Paul Reiche
Дата: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:11:10 -0700 (PDT) Кому: Oleg Klapovsky Копия: Fred Ford Тема: Re: Star Control I & II publication via GoG. Hi Oleg, That all sounds good. I contacted Kelsey to suggest we go forward with a split deal, which I hope they agree to. I think it's probably best to leave the UQM out of the deal, since it is open source and much of the work has been done by others. Thanks, - Paul
From: Paul Reiche Sent: Friday, April 29, 2011 12:34 PM To: Kelsey A. Musgrave Cc: Fred Ford Subject: Re: Star Control I & II publication via GoG. Hi Kelsey, I'd love for Oleg to be able to distribute the SC games as intended, but as we've seen, the rights situation is complicated. Would you be interested in splitting the revenue and providing the necessary use of SC trademarks so that Oleg can move forward? Thanks, - Paul
From: "Kelsey A. Musgrave" Date: May 2, 2011 11:26:38 AM PDT To: Paul Reiche Cc: Fred Ford Subject: RE: Star Control I & II publication via GoG. Hi Paul,
Sorry for the delay, I was out of the office last Friday. I would love for GOG to continue selling the SC games as intended as well. I will run this by our legal team today to see if we can make this work. Thanks, Kelsey Musgrave Digital Distribution Analyst | Atari, Inc. | 1640 S Sepulveda Blvd., Ste 300, Los Angeles, CA 90025 From: Oleg Klapovsky Date: May 4, 2011 at 2:21:38 AM PDT To: Paul Reiche Cc: Fred Ford Subject: Re: Star Control I & II publication via GoG. Hi Paul, I don't see any problems with keeping UQM out of the deal. Anyways fan will play the original game and probably after it will go and check UQM themselves. Best, Oleg
From: Oleg Klapovsky Date: May 17, 2011 6:12:34 AM PDT To: Paul Reiche Subject: Re: Star Control I & II publication via GoG. Hi Paul, Seems like we've agreed on everything with Atari. Right now we are discussing how it is better to organize the paper work. I'll keep you posted when we agree with them whether it is going to be three parties agreement or we'll be able to sign agreement with you for the code and another one for SC trademarks with Atari. BTW. Do you plan to be at E3 this year? Probably we can meet there for a chat? It will be a pleasure to meet you in person and tell you more about GOG. Thanks, Oleg
From: Paul Reiche Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 2:20 PM To: Kelsey A. Musgrave; Arianna Reiche Cc: Fred Ford Subject: Contact info regarding Star Control Hi Kelsey, While Fred and I are crazy busy finishing our current game Skylanders, I want to make sure that we also make progress on the deal allowing GOG to distribute Star Control. To that end, let me introduce Arianna Reiche who will be facilitating our side of the process. I expect we will each be dealing with Oleg directly, but if you need something from us, please let Arianna know and she will make sure we get back to you ASAP. Thanks! - Paul
Date: Mon, May 23, 2011 at 9:30 AM Subject: RE: Contact info regarding Star Control To: Paul Reiche, Arianna Reiche Cc: Fred Ford Hi Paul, Thank you for reaching out, it’s been crazy busy over here lately! It’s nice to meet you Arianna. We have made progress on this. I got this approved by management and legal at Atari, so Oleg is currently drafting an Amendment to our existing agreement that gives GOG permission to use Star Control trademarks and copyrights pay us 25% royalties from GOG’s Net Revenue received from such use. At the same time GOG is drafting an agreement with you and Fred for the rights to use the code of the game on the same royalty rate and conditions. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I will let you know when we have received the draft of the amendment and when it’s executed. I’m glad we could all work out this agreement so that GOG can continue selling the titles. Thanks, Kelsey Musgrave
Digital Distribution Analyst | Atari, Inc. | 1640 S Sepulveda Blvd., Ste 300, Los Angeles, CA 90025