I pray that everything stays as is. Were Bethseda to get their hands on BG, I'd be extremely worried. If Bioware were to re-obtain the IP, I think I'd just about die with depression. Bioware has mucked up enough things as it is. They need to keep their action-rpg asses away from BG.
Whoever buys it, if they just let Beamdog keep going with it, all is well. If not, it's a bad thing, because whoever they are, Beamdog has done an extremely good job so far and I think deserves to be the one to finish up.
It's just too bad beamdog isn't a much wealthier company that could just buy all the rights themselves...
Now there's what Kickstarter could do in this situation; let Beamdog make a bid for Atari's portion of the rights to Baldur's Gate. (maybe Icewind Dale and Torment, too, while we're at it...)
I might be wrong, but I don't think Kickstarter would let Beamdog raise money through them for buying an already existing IP. As far as I know, Kickstarter only lets you finance new projects, and you'd really need to stretch the meaning of "project" for it to include the act of buying out the publishing rights of an already existing game franchise.
[quote] I would deeply appreciate a "Legal Issues Surrounding Dungeons and Dragons and All Games Descended From Dungeons and Dragons" course from someone in the know. [/quote]
Lets see if I can do this at least SOME justice. Apologies if this has already been published.
In the 1970s a company called TSR produced a game called Dungeons and Dragons (the original Red Box set was the first). From the 70's through the mid 90's TSR continued to produce D&D and it's predicessor: Advanced D&D (First and Second Editions).
Then in the early to mid 90's (94 seems to stick in my mind) TSR went Under...a new company (producers of Magic the Gathering, or as we liked to call it "Tragic: The Adiction") Wizards of the Coast (WotC) purchased all of the D&D Rights from TSR as it went under making WotC the owner / producer and creator of D&D.
At this point there were already some representations of D&D in electronic format (Eye of the Beholder, Hillsdale?, a few others), but since they were owned by TSR, they were wholy owned products of WotC after the sale.
For a spate there not much was done with electronic D&D publishing...not much was done with real D&D Publishing either. Second Edition was first released in 1989 under TSR and really wasn't touched (revised editions were produced by WotC) up to 2000.
Then in 1998 WotC/Hasbro went to Developer BioWare and Publisher Black Isle Studios/Interplay Entertainment to produce the first AD&D CRPG in many many years: Baulder's Gate. This was a revision of the AD&D Second Edition rules ported to a CRPG methodology.
This is where the infinity Engine (Developer BioWare) came to light (Baulder's Gate was the first published use of the Infinity engine outside of it's prototype RTS that never saw the light of day) and was licensed to Black Isle/Interplay.
Black Isle/Interplay, however started running into financial trouble as well...from Wikipedia:
"Due to Interplay using the Dark Alliance Engine for Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II, and the GameCube version of the original Dark Alliance without consent from Snowblind Studios, the two studios were engaged in a legal conflict between 2003 and 2004. The lawsuit ended up determining that while Interplay would be allowed to work with materials already using the Dark Alliance Engine, they would not be able to use it for any future games. The lawsuit would have Interplay giving the Baldur's Gate trademark to Atari and the Dark Alliance trademark, albeit temporarily, to Snowblind Studios."
Thus Atari aquired the license, at this point, to the electronic D&D IP and has retained it till now, as it's gone into bankrupcy.
In 1999, WotC was having financial troubles as well and ended up being purchased as a subsidiary company of Hasbro. WotC retained independence (they kept their name and kept control of their products...namely D&D and Magic), but became a subsidiary company wholy owned by Hasbro.
So, in case you're not following the program...
1) The Intellectual Property for Dungeons and Dragons and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons passed from TSR to Wizards of the Coast to Hasbro.
2) The Intellectual Property rights for the Electronic Version of Dungeons and Dragons passed from Infinity/Black Isle to Atari.
* Hasbro owns D&D * Atari owns Electronic D&D * Interplay owns NONE of it since the Lawsuit. They own the ORIGINAL Baldur's Gate series, but not the EE's.
With Atari in Bankrupcy at this point, that would leave the ownership of the E-D&D IP up for grabs, which (again) is why I would expect Overhaul can't do anything with it.
@Illydth Awesome post, but I think TSR was bought out by WotC in '97. I think BG1 was produced in 97-98, and started as a TSR project, which is the reason why they still had the TSR logo on it at release.
For whatever reason, their publisher, Atari, prohibits them to do so. Hence no patch release.
The bigger the company, it seems, the less clue they have on how to run things. I hope Beamdog manages to convince them otherwise.
Yep. Doing crap like this is the reason Atari is in the trouble they are in right now. I mean they were making money from this game (even when purchased from the Beamdog site). They were going to make money on BG2 EE. Why shut down both games but still continue to sell it on Steam? Smells of management incompetence, but you know I should have expected as much. I have always HATED Atari, probably even more than I hate EA.
Um, Glass half full perspective (I hate these but I believe this is at least a possibility):
Atari owns the license to BG/E-D&D. There's no legal problem for Atari to continue selling a game it owns full rights/ownership to.
Beamdog owns NOTHING in this process. If they keep selling a game they do NOT own the rights to (only an agreement with a company that no longer is solvent) that is a legal problem.
That would be why the Steam version is still for sale while beamdog's version is not.
@Adul: The sales of TSR to WotC I didn't look up, I just remember it happening in my college years so I made a pretty quick guess as to when that was. You're right, 1997.
BG was not published or started under TSR. WotC Just used TSR's name for several years (till the release of AD&D 3.0 where they dropped TSR's name completely from the product.
"Although the new owners made use of the TSR name for D&D products for three years, they stopped using the TSR name when a new version of the D&D rules was published in 2000."
--Wikipedia Article for TSR Inc.
I think the above is at least some modicum of a primer for why the hell this is so screwed up.
The Intellectual Property for D&D has been owned by no less than 3 companies: 2 of which are still in business (though one owns the other so that's pretty easy), and the C-D&D IP has been owned DIRECTLY by no less (if you count Developers and Publishing houses) by 5 Studios and Indirectly by a Sixth.
* UBI Soft (Published Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor) * Bioware * Interplay * Intrplay's Subsidiary Development Company - Black Isle Studios * Atari (Gained through a COURT DECISION, NOT Through Purchase...and this in and of itself is enough to cause MASSIVE confusion since Interplay retained rights to "Baulder's Gate" while Atari Gained Rights to "D&D") * And (since BioWare was bought out) EA Games.
Add in Hasbro and WotC, and you have no less than 6 entities that have had a financial stake in E-D&D Games and Baulder's Gate in particular, and 7 if you look at EA Games as the owner of the engine the game was built on.
That's a pretty damned complicated legal morass to wade through.
All the best to the development team. I hope you can take care of yourself so long as the project is on hold and hopefully you can find some other activities to generate income in the meantime.
If everything goes to hell, perhaps Overhaul/Beamdog could do a new Infinity Engine(ish) RPG with a custom ruleset or one based on i.e. Pathfinder, perhaps even with a similar story to Baldur's Gate.
What also could be cool were an InfinityEngine(ish) Module Editor (something like the Aurora/Electron Toolset for NWN1/2), this could truly enhance a game's longevity (and with today's bandwidth speeds, transferring art assets and collision maps is not a problem on the fly in MP).
Yet still I have hope. For where Chaotic Evil is, Lawful Good will be near.
P.S.: Did you know that the entire Diablo 2 team was fired? What did they do? They formed Runic Games and made Torchlight 1 and 2, the spiritual successor to Diablo and were successful. Torchlight 2 is even considered the best alternative to Diablo 3.
Another known example is Iron Lore, Iron Lore died with Titan Quest, but the devs went on, founded their own company and are working as Crate Entertainment on an ARPG named Grim Dawn.
A similar step is actually (IMHO) possible for Overhaul/Beamdog, too. And when financial questions arise but the enthusiasm is great, then Kickstarter is also a step to consider.
Or what about a Free2Play (NO Pay2Win! I dare ya!) persistant world/MMO, for which the engine was originally intended?
TL;DR: It is NOT over for Beamdog/Overhaul. There are ways for them to continue. If not the original way, then via a spiritual successor. And whichever path they may choose, I wish all the best for them on their way, but just don't give up.
Are you guys making anything off of the Atari/Steam sales?
I ask because I'm pretty sure the community here would be happy to either continue purchasing at the steam store to help you guys out and/or to hold their purchase till this all gets over with...based upon whether or not you're all getting funded through steam or not.
Is there anything the community can do in the mean time?
I wouldn't mind something like that. We could pay a "donation" and then receive however many copies of BG2:EE the amount covers at the time of release.
Or, you know, we could send them crates full of cupcakes - as happened to BioWare/EA. Only in this case, it would be in appreciation rather than wanting a different ending to a video game. <.<
It's probably not healthy to have cupcakes for the three main meals of the day, but who cares about health so long as you're not hungry?
I am mostly joking, although the similar-to-pre-order-but-not-technically-pre-order deal sounds nice in theory. Not so good in practice. I have really wanted a donate button on this site for some time, though.
2) The Intellectual Property rights for the Electronic Version of Dungeons and Dragons passed from Infinity/Black Isle to Atari.
Not quite; on August 15, 2011, the digital licensing rights for D&D were returned to Hasbro as part of a settlement between them and Atari, though Atari continued to develop and market several games under license from Hasbro.
The exact legal situation regarding Baldur's Gate is an absolute mess. As far as I can tell, Atari only kept the distribution rights to Baldur's Gate.
Baldur's Gate is part of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Any product which simply includes the name in the title does not necessarily have anything to do with the computer game series. The linked-to adventure module is a pen-and-paper product.
The actual intellectual property for Dungeons and Dragons have always been owned by TSR/Wizards of the Coast, by the way -- what the various companies have had were digital licensing rights.
The Beamdawgers were hard working problem solving defenders of the universe those who oppose them and their rule are vile worshipers of sullen shar and no doubt went on a killing spree slaying all the paladins and temple guards in the the church district and then followed up by slaughtering all the animals and pub drinkers in Wakeens Promenade before leaving the area forever and going to the Elf Home Battle to Save them from the invaders.
I realize some of them are sworn to Cyric and do indeed rave and threaten at the grocery store. But, that is only after 20 hour crunch time days of perfecting the script of the Ruler of All Tiax.
We can all only hope they are able to make some gold before this heresy is resolved. Maybe they can try a mobile turnip sales cart and illegal flasher sales. I hate the IRS and the huge evil companies that wreck our world (even though I work for various governments and the military industrial complex on a few tours- your tax dollars at work - and yes I still think the rebels I trained are better than the kid killing army) but I always retire back to my mountain earth bag rpg proof hold fast in Montana and give some money to the poor too.... so I would describe my self as Chaotic Neutral rather than Neutral Evil which is the alignment of Atari....
Based on what I'm reading here, it looks to me like the bottom line is that Atari's bankruptcy is the problem that has temporarily halted BG:EE. I seem to remember, a few months back, that a lot of posts were made, worrying what effect Atari's declaration of bankruptcy would have on BG:EE.
The party line at that time, was, basically, "Don't worry, everything will be fine, and the bankruptcy of Atari will not affect the BG:EE community."
Oops. It looks like it kind of will.
It was Atari's contract with the BG:EE team that made BG:EE possible. Atari's bankruptcy brings that contract into question, as to whether it stands in any shape, form, or fashion.
Lessee, Legal Entity A enters into a contract with Legal Entity B. Legal Entity A ceases to exist. Exactly what rights does Legal Entity B have with regards to the contract it made with now non-existent Legal Entity A? My guess would be, basically none. The contract legally dissolves when Entity A dissolves.
It's as though you made a personal, signed contract with a person who has died. You might try to sue that person's estate, but you are unlikely to get much satisfaction, especially if that person was massively in debt when they died, and all their many creditors have liens on the estate. You'd be the last person who could get anything from the estate.
That would mean though, that we're really "speaking ill of the dead", by bashing Atari, who more than likely had every intention of honoring their contract with the BG:EE team. In fact, they may have even hoped that the BG:EE project might save them from bankruptcy, but it just wasn't big enough financially to do that.
Perhaps the true villain in this story is a contemporary society that creates a majority market for very casual games, and that the market for classic computer rpg's is a relatively small niche market. The small size of our market relative to the masses makes it very hard for any small development company to succeed in marketing to us.
Our best hope at this point, it seems to me, is for a successful bid to be made for the residual, now very low-valued rights to computer D&D distribution from the "estate" of the now-dead Atari. And, since that one IP is a very small property within the estate, like a "distressed property" from a vast real-estate empire of a dead billionaire, who was sinking financially when he died, that one little "house" within the vast real estate empire of the dead billionaire is going to be very, very tricky to obtain.
Without great care from the one venture capitalist who thinks he can make a fortune if he can obtain that one little foreclosed classic rpg house, the little house will just get demolished, and a big parking lot and shopping mall for casual console gamers built on the lot on which it formerly stood. In time, no one will even remember that the little house was even there.
make a donations page or somthin, id pull some overtime at work to throw your way. im just sayin, if u can get 10,000 people donating 10$, thats gotta start counting for somthin. i just love this game, and i want more of it. if i win the lottery im throwing whatever you'd need to keep it going.
Comments
I would deeply appreciate a "Legal Issues Surrounding Dungeons and Dragons and All Games Descended From Dungeons and Dragons" course from someone in the know.
[/quote]
Lets see if I can do this at least SOME justice. Apologies if this has already been published.
In the 1970s a company called TSR produced a game called Dungeons and Dragons (the original Red Box set was the first). From the 70's through the mid 90's TSR continued to produce D&D and it's predicessor: Advanced D&D (First and Second Editions).
Then in the early to mid 90's (94 seems to stick in my mind) TSR went Under...a new company (producers of Magic the Gathering, or as we liked to call it "Tragic: The Adiction") Wizards of the Coast (WotC) purchased all of the D&D Rights from TSR as it went under making WotC the owner / producer and creator of D&D.
At this point there were already some representations of D&D in electronic format (Eye of the Beholder, Hillsdale?, a few others), but since they were owned by TSR, they were wholy owned products of WotC after the sale.
For a spate there not much was done with electronic D&D publishing...not much was done with real D&D Publishing either. Second Edition was first released in 1989 under TSR and really wasn't touched (revised editions were produced by WotC) up to 2000.
Then in 1998 WotC/Hasbro went to Developer BioWare and Publisher Black Isle Studios/Interplay Entertainment to produce the first AD&D CRPG in many many years: Baulder's Gate. This was a revision of the AD&D Second Edition rules ported to a CRPG methodology.
This is where the infinity Engine (Developer BioWare) came to light (Baulder's Gate was the first published use of the Infinity engine outside of it's prototype RTS that never saw the light of day) and was licensed to Black Isle/Interplay.
Black Isle/Interplay, however started running into financial trouble as well...from Wikipedia:
"Due to Interplay using the Dark Alliance Engine for Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II, and the GameCube version of the original Dark Alliance without consent from Snowblind Studios, the two studios were engaged in a legal conflict between 2003 and 2004. The lawsuit ended up determining that while Interplay would be allowed to work with materials already using the Dark Alliance Engine, they would not be able to use it for any future games. The lawsuit would have Interplay giving the Baldur's Gate trademark to Atari and the Dark Alliance trademark, albeit temporarily, to Snowblind Studios."
Thus Atari aquired the license, at this point, to the electronic D&D IP and has retained it till now, as it's gone into bankrupcy.
In 1999, WotC was having financial troubles as well and ended up being purchased as a subsidiary company of Hasbro. WotC retained independence (they kept their name and kept control of their products...namely D&D and Magic), but became a subsidiary company wholy owned by Hasbro.
So, in case you're not following the program...
1) The Intellectual Property for Dungeons and Dragons and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons passed from TSR to Wizards of the Coast to Hasbro.
2) The Intellectual Property rights for the Electronic Version of Dungeons and Dragons passed from Infinity/Black Isle to Atari.
* Hasbro owns D&D
* Atari owns Electronic D&D
* Interplay owns NONE of it since the Lawsuit. They own the ORIGINAL Baldur's Gate series, but not the EE's.
With Atari in Bankrupcy at this point, that would leave the ownership of the E-D&D IP up for grabs, which (again) is why I would expect Overhaul can't do anything with it.
Atari owns the license to BG/E-D&D. There's no legal problem for Atari to continue selling a game it owns full rights/ownership to.
Beamdog owns NOTHING in this process. If they keep selling a game they do NOT own the rights to (only an agreement with a company that no longer is solvent) that is a legal problem.
That would be why the Steam version is still for sale while beamdog's version is not.
BG was not published or started under TSR. WotC Just used TSR's name for several years (till the release of AD&D 3.0 where they dropped TSR's name completely from the product.
"Although the new owners made use of the TSR name for D&D products for three years, they stopped using the TSR name when a new version of the D&D rules was published in 2000."
--Wikipedia Article for TSR Inc.
I think the above is at least some modicum of a primer for why the hell this is so screwed up.
The Intellectual Property for D&D has been owned by no less than 3 companies: 2 of which are still in business (though one owns the other so that's pretty easy), and the C-D&D IP has been owned DIRECTLY by no less (if you count Developers and Publishing houses) by 5 Studios and Indirectly by a Sixth.
* UBI Soft (Published Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor)
* Bioware
* Interplay
* Intrplay's Subsidiary Development Company - Black Isle Studios
* Atari (Gained through a COURT DECISION, NOT Through Purchase...and this in and of itself is enough to cause MASSIVE confusion since Interplay retained rights to "Baulder's Gate" while Atari Gained Rights to "D&D")
* And (since BioWare was bought out) EA Games.
Add in Hasbro and WotC, and you have no less than 6 entities that have had a financial stake in E-D&D Games and Baulder's Gate in particular, and 7 if you look at EA Games as the owner of the engine the game was built on.
That's a pretty damned complicated legal morass to wade through.
What also could be cool were an InfinityEngine(ish) Module Editor (something like the Aurora/Electron Toolset for NWN1/2), this could truly enhance a game's longevity (and with today's bandwidth speeds, transferring art assets and collision maps is not a problem on the fly in MP).
Yet still I have hope. For where Chaotic Evil is, Lawful Good will be near.
P.S.:
Did you know that the entire Diablo 2 team was fired? What did they do? They formed Runic Games and made Torchlight 1 and 2, the spiritual successor to Diablo and were successful. Torchlight 2 is even considered the best alternative to Diablo 3.
Another known example is Iron Lore, Iron Lore died with Titan Quest, but the devs went on, founded their own company and are working as Crate Entertainment on an ARPG named Grim Dawn.
A similar step is actually (IMHO) possible for Overhaul/Beamdog, too. And when financial questions arise but the enthusiasm is great, then Kickstarter is also a step to consider.
Or what about a Free2Play (NO Pay2Win! I dare ya!) persistant world/MMO, for which the engine was originally intended?
TL;DR:
It is NOT over for Beamdog/Overhaul. There are ways for them to continue. If not the original way, then via a spiritual successor. And whichever path they may choose, I wish all the best for them on their way, but just don't give up.
That is all.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Product.aspx?x=dnd/products/dndacc/45370000
I don't think WOTC has ever released RPG products with Baldur's Gate in the title.
Maybe I'm reading into this too much...
Are you guys making anything off of the Atari/Steam sales?
I ask because I'm pretty sure the community here would be happy to either continue purchasing at the steam store to help you guys out and/or to hold their purchase till this all gets over with...based upon whether or not you're all getting funded through steam or not.
Is there anything the community can do in the mean time?
Or, you know, we could send them crates full of cupcakes - as happened to BioWare/EA. Only in this case, it would be in appreciation rather than wanting a different ending to a video game. <.<
It's probably not healthy to have cupcakes for the three main meals of the day, but who cares about health so long as you're not hungry?
The exact legal situation regarding Baldur's Gate is an absolute mess. As far as I can tell, Atari only kept the distribution rights to Baldur's Gate.
Baldur's Gate is part of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Any product which simply includes the name in the title does not necessarily have anything to do with the computer game series. The linked-to adventure module is a pen-and-paper product.
The actual intellectual property for Dungeons and Dragons have always been owned by TSR/Wizards of the Coast, by the way -- what the various companies have had were digital licensing rights.
I realize some of them are sworn to Cyric and do indeed rave and threaten at the grocery store. But, that is only after 20 hour crunch time days of perfecting the script of the Ruler of All Tiax.
We can all only hope they are able to make some gold before this heresy is resolved. Maybe they can try a mobile turnip sales cart and illegal flasher sales. I hate the IRS and the huge evil companies that wreck our world (even though I work for various governments and the military industrial complex on a few tours- your tax dollars at work - and yes I still think the rebels I trained are better than the kid killing army) but I always retire back to my mountain earth bag rpg proof hold fast in Montana and give some money to the poor too.... so I would describe my self as Chaotic Neutral rather than Neutral Evil which is the alignment of Atari....
The party line at that time, was, basically, "Don't worry, everything will be fine, and the bankruptcy of Atari will not affect the BG:EE community."
Oops. It looks like it kind of will.
It was Atari's contract with the BG:EE team that made BG:EE possible. Atari's bankruptcy brings that contract into question, as to whether it stands in any shape, form, or fashion.
Lessee, Legal Entity A enters into a contract with Legal Entity B. Legal Entity A ceases to exist. Exactly what rights does Legal Entity B have with regards to the contract it made with now non-existent Legal Entity A? My guess would be, basically none. The contract legally dissolves when Entity A dissolves.
It's as though you made a personal, signed contract with a person who has died. You might try to sue that person's estate, but you are unlikely to get much satisfaction, especially if that person was massively in debt when they died, and all their many creditors have liens on the estate. You'd be the last person who could get anything from the estate.
That would mean though, that we're really "speaking ill of the dead", by bashing Atari, who more than likely had every intention of honoring their contract with the BG:EE team. In fact, they may have even hoped that the BG:EE project might save them from bankruptcy, but it just wasn't big enough financially to do that.
Perhaps the true villain in this story is a contemporary society that creates a majority market for very casual games, and that the market for classic computer rpg's is a relatively small niche market. The small size of our market relative to the masses makes it very hard for any small development company to succeed in marketing to us.
Our best hope at this point, it seems to me, is for a successful bid to be made for the residual, now very low-valued rights to computer D&D distribution from the "estate" of the now-dead Atari. And, since that one IP is a very small property within the estate, like a "distressed property" from a vast real-estate empire of a dead billionaire, who was sinking financially when he died, that one little "house" within the vast real estate empire of the dead billionaire is going to be very, very tricky to obtain.
Without great care from the one venture capitalist who thinks he can make a fortune if he can obtain that one little foreclosed classic rpg house, the little house will just get demolished, and a big parking lot and shopping mall for casual console gamers built on the lot on which it formerly stood. In time, no one will even remember that the little house was even there.
SEND ME ALL THE PIZZA