Well... could at least "someone" bring an "similar patch", unnoficial of course, as a "tweakpack" or "bug removing mod"? After all our community is know for make mods.
The problem is much bigger than the patch imo. Worst case scenario there won't be any BG2EE which will make it impossible to continue the saga and thereby tremendously diminish the value of BGEE. It would end up an isolated game which will in turn make it fairly pointless to develop mods for or even play at all for anyone who fancies going through the entire trilogy.
We really need a "disagree" button, as this was not spam, but I could not disagree more with this statement if I tried. This is not a matter of the "dealership" screwing you over, this is a case where someone produces something, and a third party, who HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCTION, breaks their contract and takes all of the profit. Atari is still selling BG:EE through their site and Steam. Atari's makeing money. Beamdog, on the other hand, has been told, in essence "Gee, thanks for improving the game we bought the rights to. But, remember when we said you could make some money off of your work? Yeah, go screw yourselves, it's ours now, suckers!" Give me one good reason Beamdog should be blamed for Atari breaching contract. ONE.
[...] this is a case where someone produces something, and a third party, who HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCTION, breaks their contract and takes all of the profit. Atari is still selling BG:EE through their site and Steam. Atari's makeing money. Beamdog, on the other hand, has been told, in essence "Gee, thanks for improving the game we bought the rights to. But, remember when we said you could make some money off of your work? Yeah, go screw yourselves, it's ours now, suckers!" Give me one good reason Beamdog should be blamed for Atari breaching contract. ONE.
Umm, where are you getting this from? The only part of what you said that I've seen any evidence for is the fact that the game is still for sale on Steam and Atari's website, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Beamdog isn't receiving anything for these sales.
Honestly, the amount of speculation in this thread is ridiculous.
We really need a "disagree" button, as this was not spam, but I could not disagree more with this statement if I tried. This is not a matter of the "dealership" screwing you over, this is a case where someone produces something, and a third party, who HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCTION, breaks their contract and takes all of the profit. Atari is still selling BG:EE through their site and Steam. Atari's makeing money. Beamdog, on the other hand, has been told, in essence "Gee, thanks for improving the game we bought the rights to. But, remember when we said you could make some money off of your work? Yeah, go screw yourselves, it's ours now, suckers!" Give me one good reason Beamdog should be blamed for Atari breaching contract. ONE.
An eon ago, when Elminster was nothing but a young lad, we used to have a disagree button. In my opinion the forum is better without one.
We really need a "disagree" button, as this was not spam, but I could not disagree more with this statement if I tried. This is not a matter of the "dealership" screwing you over, this is a case where someone produces something, and a third party, who HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCTION, breaks their contract and takes all of the profit. Atari is still selling BG:EE through their site and Steam. Atari's makeing money. Beamdog, on the other hand, has been told, in essence "Gee, thanks for improving the game we bought the rights to. But, remember when we said you could make some money off of your work? Yeah, go screw yourselves, it's ours now, suckers!" Give me one good reason Beamdog should be blamed for Atari breaching contract. ONE.
Well... there's a truth here... Beamdog has being ordered to shut down the sales, while steam and ATARI keep making them. This sounds like hierarchy if anyone ask me.
Something is very, but VERY wrong here. Twice in fact, as not only Beamdog has been forbidden of make any further sale, but ATARI and STEAM are selling a game in which ATARI forbidden the release of new patches.
If the announcement given here in this forum is right, ATARI is clearly making a VERY unloyal commerce pratice and in the process is harming the righs of thousand of good faith customers.
About the disagree button, i was one of the first to ask it's removal, some ppl didn't knew the huge amount of problems introduced by that feature.
We really need a "disagree" button, as this was not spam, but I could not disagree more with this statement if I tried. This is not a matter of the "dealership" screwing you over, this is a case where someone produces something, and a third party, who HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCTION, breaks their contract and takes all of the profit. Atari is still selling BG:EE through their site and Steam. Atari's makeing money. Beamdog, on the other hand, has been told, in essence "Gee, thanks for improving the game we bought the rights to. But, remember when we said you could make some money off of your work? Yeah, go screw yourselves, it's ours now, suckers!" Give me one good reason Beamdog should be blamed for Atari breaching contract. ONE.
Well... there's a truth here... Beamdog has being ordered to shut down the sales, while steam and ATARI keep making them. This sounds like hierarchy if anyone ask me.
Something is very, but VERY wrong here. Twice in fact, as not only Beamdog has been forbidden of make any further sale, but ATARI and STEAM are selling a game in which ATARI forbidden the release of new patches.
If the announcement given here in this forum is right, ATARI is clearly making a VERY unloyal commerce pratice and in the process is harming the righs of thousand of good faith customers.
About the disagree button, i was one of the first to ask it's removal, some ppl didn't knew the huge amount of problems introduced by that feature.
Atari has been pulling this kind of crap ever since the acquired the D&D license. It seems like every developer that does something for them runs away screaming saying they would never work with them again. I'm really unhappy with what they are doing but I can honestly say it doesn't surprise me at all. Atari does not care at all about their customers (the people who buy their games & the devs that make them) and the past 10 years have shown that. That is a major reason why they are going through bankruptcy now.
We really need a "disagree" button, as this was not spam, but I could not disagree more with this statement if I tried. This is not a matter of the "dealership" screwing you over, this is a case where someone produces something, and a third party, who HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCTION, breaks their contract and takes all of the profit. Atari is still selling BG:EE through their site and Steam. Atari's makeing money. Beamdog, on the other hand, has been told, in essence "Gee, thanks for improving the game we bought the rights to. But, remember when we said you could make some money off of your work? Yeah, go screw yourselves, it's ours now, suckers!" Give me one good reason Beamdog should be blamed for Atari breaching contract. ONE.
I am blaming them for their product not working. If they had done a better job with the last patch, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If they had waited until the game was completed before releasing it in the first place, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Despite the many flaws with the game I have remained patient until now because I had faith that the developers were going to fix these problems. Now to hear after many months of waiting that any progress has been suspended indefinitely is unacceptable. I don't want to hear excuses, no matter how valid they may be, I want my game to work.
If this was Dragon Age 3 or something and it was EA making these excuses, nobody would be buying them for a second, we would all be saying "don't care, get it done." While on one hand it's nice to deal with these smaller developers where you feel connected to them and like you are part of a community, a side effect is the relationship becomes too "buddy buddy." This is a business/customer relationship, we need to remember that. I don't care that these guys seem like nice people that are trying hard anymore, I'm fed up. Since I'm sure they won't be offering me my $20 back (although considering they sold a broken product, it wouldn't be unreasonable to ask for it) I will settle for making sure they are aware of my disappointment.
@morehouse I'm going to take my own advice from another thread and stop feeding the troll. Even if you aren't trolling, it's obvious I'm not going to change your opinion.
I don't see anyone trolling here. Let's try to remember Rule #4: Be excellent to each other.
Not everyone's going to like the game, or where it currently stands in development. We'll be the first to admit we have a bit of work to do (and the currently-on-hold patch is aimed at that), and expressing that view shouldn't be discounted.
Addressing people's concerns about the patch: there's a lot that we can't say about why the game's been pulled from Beamdog.com and the Apple AppStore, or why we can't work on or release the patch we've been building for the past several months. When we're able to give out more information we'll do the best we can to do so; until then, we ask that everyone try to be patient while we try to get this issue resolved.
But I guess you can never tell when Lawful Evil Wild Mages are at work.
Courts move very, VERY slowly, so let's hope cooler heads prevail and an agreement is reached.
My sister is a lawyer, and a colleague of hers worked on a divorce in which the parties spent thousands on billable hours fighting over a trailer worth a fraction of that. Here's hoping no one involved here makes the same mistake.
When playing poker, falling prey to the "sunk cost" temptation (also called being pot-committed) is the fastest way to go broke.
Regardless of who's fault it is, if the patch is never released there is just no way I could ever by a game from Overhaul/Beamdog again. If I bought a car that turned out to have engine parts missing, and the salesman tells me "Due to legal issues I can't fix the mistakes made in our factory," I'm not going back to that dealership.
... This is probably one of the most ridiculous reactions to this news that I've yet seen. First of all, the car analogy makes absolutely no sense (cf. "Lemon Law"), but let's not dwell on that part of it.
"Regardless of who's [sic] fault it is..."
Why doesn't it matter whose fault it is? When you try to cast Beamdog as a shady used car dealer, the implication there is that they're grifters out to make a quick buck without producing a quality product. This is clearly not the case at all, and the removal of product from their catalogue and the inability to service existing customers and products is something that is *clearly* out of Beamdog's control.
What you are basically doing here, is throwing a childish tantrum, *entirely* out of spite, then insist that what you're doing isn't spite-driven nor tantrum-like. And then, with a dramatic flourish, you declare that Beamdog has just permanently lost a customer.
No offense, Morehouse, but I sorta think Beamdog's better off without customers like you. 'Cuz right now, when they're up shit's creek and trying to get back on their feet, you did everything but offer them a hand up or a kind word.
I am blaming them for their product not working. If they had done a better job with the last patch, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If they had waited until the game was completed before releasing it in the first place, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Despite the many flaws with the game I have remained patient until now because I had faith that the developers were going to fix these problems.
Well... ahem. Not to rub this in your face or anything, but the game works *perfectly* on my end. When you say "many flaws," I find myself chuckling just a little bit.
Which is, really, part of the problem. Let's go back to your car analogy for a minute. This is less about buying a lemon than it is about trying to restore a classic car. It's a *lot* of hard work, mostly because computer hardware and software have both changed a lot since the mid 90s. Re-releasing a classic game, and making it multi-platform, is a huge, herculean undertaking, and anyone who expected it would work 100% perfectly upon release on all platforms everywhere is either totally unreasonable (I think this one's you) or they just don't know (or don't care) what they're talking about. You're getting a truckload of content for a price that is a fraction of what this generation's crappy new titles usually sell for. And let's remember that for your $20, you're getting a product you only have to download once, and *free* updates and patches all along the way. When was the last time you bought a car and got free service for life?
Let's get one thing absolutely clear, though: The most immediate cause of why we're having this discussion is that thing we haven't been informed of that prompted the removal of BG:EE. If whatever-happened-to-make-Beamdog-have-to-remove-download-and-purchase-links-for-BG:EE-and-cease-all-work-on-patches-and-BG2:EE hadn't happened, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
But I guess we could also indulge in your exercise a bit, and go even further back and say that if Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and the Silicon Valley generation hadn't invented personal computing as we know it today, and if Gary Gygax et al. hadn't invented Dungeons and Dragons, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Now to hear after many months of waiting that any progress has been suspended indefinitely is unacceptable. I don't want to hear excuses, no matter how valid they may be, I want my game to work.
"I don't care how valid and reasonable what you have to say is! Make my game work or I'm totally going to scream and urinate all over the floor! Waaaaaaahhhh!"
... is what I thought I heard you say just now.
For what it's worth, I'm sure that the fact that progress has been suspended indefinitely is equally unacceptable to the folks at Beamdog. Which is why I think it's unfair of you to blame them for something that is beyond their control. Perhaps when you start your own game production company, and you live up to these unforgiving standards you've set for Beamdog, I'll change my tune. But until then I think you really need to cut these people some slack, and maybe chill out with the latest iteration of Angry Birds or something.
If this was Dragon Age 3 or something and it was EA making these excuses, nobody would be buying them for a second, we would all be saying "don't care, get it done."
First of all, no, because people are going to line up for Dragon Age 3 no matter what delays or snags EA hits along the way. Or haven't you noticed how Diablo 3 is still chugging along despite the fact that it's one of the most troubled games in a generation?
Second of all, EA is the most hated corporation in the world, and yet they still make money hand-over-fist on virtually everything they publish.
While on one hand it's nice to deal with these smaller developers where you feel connected to them and like you are part of a community, a side effect is the relationship becomes too "buddy buddy." This is a business/customer relationship, we need to remember that. I don't care that these guys seem like nice people that are trying hard anymore, I'm fed up. Since I'm sure they won't be offering me my $20 back (although considering they sold a broken product, it wouldn't be unreasonable to ask for it) I will settle for making sure they are aware of my disappointment.
Okay. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. I'm gonna go kill Sarevok again.
I liked your opinion @Sixheadeddog, if not a bit anger against @morehouse, but sometimes we just have to take something from the chest and put it out plain and simple.
But one point that i disagree, and maybe you reason it with me, is that Beamdog isn't free of responsibility in reason of the entire issue being out of the company hands.
Risk & Business, it's plain there and this issue can't fall on customer's back. From what i saw you writing i believe i don't even need to go deep in explanation here. If beamdog can't give the answers to some problems due to copyright restrictions, they should point the partner responsible for that and (if exist) a contact link for that partner. If that's not done, eventually the heat will fall in Beamdog's back and i can understand ppl that want and request professionalism in his/her dealings with the company.
However i would like to remember everyone that Beamdog 1° promisse even before start the project, in the early moments of the company (at may/june 2012) was that IF something happened with the company or if for some reason the company had to be shut down, they would free the game without any need of online check anymore, and taking the fact that every devs is somehow a modder, i don't think that we're going to be left in the dark with a bad investment. So even with all this going on, i somehow feel safe with my investment.
But ok, enought of that issue. Let's turn our attention to more important questions.
Is this issue with HASBRO..., or company X, so problematic to reach this level of damage? What copyrights where entitled to HASBRO..., or company X, and what can BG:EE do now without HASBRO..., or company X, limitations after you solve these issues? Apparently, before Adventure Y, we will have an Adventure X, where an old ally become a fierce enemy! How epic!!!
I liked your opinion @Sixheadeddog, if not a bit anger against @morehouse, but sometimes we just have to take something from the chest and put it out plain and simple.
... Sorry. Sometimes I suffer (and, following, lots of other people end up suffering as well) from my -4 penalty to save vs. troll bait.
But one point that i disagree, and maybe you reason it with me, is that Beamdog isn't free of responsibility in reason of the entire issue being out of the company hands.
Risk & Business, it's plain there and this issue can't fall on customer's back. From what i saw you writing i believe i don't even need to go deep in explanation here. If beamdog can't give the answers to some problems due to copyright restrictions, they should point the partner responsible for that and (if exist) a contact link for that partner. If that's not done, eventually the heat will fall in Beamdog's back and i can understand ppl that want and request professionalism in his/her dealings with the company.
But that's just the thing: Beamdog isn't allowed to say *anything* about what's going on. They can't even tell us what other parties are involved. Anything that has been said in these discussion threads over the last few days has been, at best, speculation, rumor and guess-work.
The other thing that's worth noting here is that the information blackout is not going to be permanent: eventually, as things sort themselves out, we'll learn more about what happened and why. And odds are good that Beamdog will eventually be allowed to continue its work -- although Beamdog isn't allowed to confirm or deny this or give us anything resembling a timetable.
I disagree that Beamdog has ownership of anything resembling "responsibility" for what's happened (although, once again, nobody knows anything specific about what it is that's happened, so perhaps I can't even say that for sure). But as a consumer -- and a relatively pleased consumer -- I'm completely willing to cut the company some slack. Like, a LOT of slack. The slackingest amount of slack that can possibly be cut for any single person and/or corporate entity at one time. Because it's crap like this that Beamdog willingly opted to expose itself to in order to bring us something that we clearly were interested in having access to again: not only do they have to untangle and sort through the ancient programming code of the Infinity engine, but they also have to deal with lawyers and rights-holders and suits (oh my).
However i would like to remember everyone that Beamdog 1° promisse even before start the project, in the early moments of the company (at may/june 2012) was that IF something happened with the company or if for some reason the company had to be shut down, they would free the game without any need of online check anymore, and taking the fact that every devs is somehow a modder, i don't think that we're going to be left in the dark with a bad investment. So even with all this going on, i somehow feel safe with my investment.
It's best to take that promise in context, though: when the promise was made, there didn't seem to be any question about Beamdog's right to do what they'd set out to do with Baldur's Gate. Addressing the current trend in games publishing, where a publishing house will put out a game with stringent DRM, and then when that house folds the game ceases to work because its DRM can't phone home to verify that the user can actually use the software. (all you Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 players: this is what you have to look forward to someday)
But ok, enought of that issue. Let's turn our attention to more important questions.
Is this issue with HASBRO..., or company X, so problematic to reach this level of damage? What copyrights where entitled to HASBRO..., or company X, and what can BG:EE do now without HASBRO..., or company X, limitations after you solve these issues? Apparently, before Adventure Y, we will have an Adventure X, where an old ally become a fierce enemy! How epic!!!
These are all questions that no one outside of Beamdog can answer. Well, except perhaps for whoever the Other Party(ies) is/are. Was it Mister Hasbro in the Dining Room with the Lead Pipe? Or Colonel Atari in the Ballroom with the Revolver?...
@morehouse: I don't think there has been a single game out, at least on this decade, that has not required a patch. Does that mean the entire game industry is a shady car salesman that sells broken cars and has you fix them later?
Hey, if it's so, then at least the fix is usually free.
Because it's crap like this that Beamdog willingly opted to expose itself to in order to bring us something that we clearly were interested in having access to again: not only do they have to untangle and sort through the ancient programming code of the Infinity engine, but they also have to deal with lawyers and rights-holders and suits (oh my).
Let's not kid ourselves. Beamdog didn't expose themselves to this 'crap' purely for 'our' benefit. They wanted (as much as anything else) to make some fairly easy money out of a platform which was already built (barring a few coding updates). The fact that Beamdog were satisfied to continue with the project even after they couldn't acquire source material and the rights to the game backs this up. In essence, they saw an opportunity to re-release a popular game, in whatever form available to them in order to make money on it.
Now if the business plan is to generate relatively easy cash from sales of BG:EE and BG2:EE, so that the cash can be pumped into developing BG3 (from scratch). Then I'm very much on their side, and believe that it's a good business plan.
From Atari's administrator's point of view there is a big difference between Steam sales and other sales.
Steam sales = money going to Atari. Now Atari may owe some of that money to other BG:EE stakeholders such as Beamdog, Hasbro, etc, but all those other stakeholders will have to join the line of Atari creditors and probably won't get all their money back.
Non steam sales = money going to Beamdog. Beamdog will then have to pay part of that money over to the various stakeholders, including Atari. But this means effectively that the BG:EE stakeholders all get paid in full and Atari (and by extension their existing creditors) get less.
It sucks, but Atari's administrators are probably legally obliged to take this action in order to protect Atari's creditors as a whole.
I've just bought a lottery ticket. If I win the £157 million jackpot I'll look into purchasing the IP rights. Problem solved.
And if we both win the jackpot, share it, we can team up and buy it. We can start BioWere, in memory of two once-great things: BioWare and Werebears, and then partner with Beamdog.
Because it's crap like this that Beamdog willingly opted to expose itself to in order to bring us something that we clearly were interested in having access to again: not only do they have to untangle and sort through the ancient programming code of the Infinity engine, but they also have to deal with lawyers and rights-holders and suits (oh my).
Let's not kid ourselves. Beamdog didn't expose themselves to this 'crap' purely for 'our' benefit. They wanted (as much as anything else) to make some fairly easy money out of a platform which was already built (barring a few coding updates). The fact that Beamdog were satisfied to continue with the project even after they couldn't acquire source material and the rights to the game backs this up. In essence, they saw an opportunity to re-release a popular game, in whatever form available to them in order to make money on it.
Now if the business plan is to generate relatively easy cash from sales of BG:EE and BG2:EE, so that the cash can be pumped into developing BG3 (from scratch). Then I'm very much on their side, and believe that it's a good business plan.
That's... an interesting take on the situation...
I'm not sure how taking old shaky Windows 95/98 era code and restructuring to work on 4 different platforms(one of which they were still working on when this mess happened and none of which are Windows 95/98), rewriting the rendering engine twice and creating all the extra content both present and future could be considered "easy money." Maybe in comparison to the reverse engineering efforts of the GemRB team, but as far as programming projects go, BGEE doesn't strike me as low hanging fruit. Not to mention that there are plenty of games that would have been less of a legal nightmare to gain access to.
All I know is that you don't put yourself in the middle of a tug-o-war match with three different legal teams just(or even primarily) to make a bit of money off a decidedly niche audience.
Comments
We really need a "disagree" button, as this was not spam, but I could not disagree more with this statement if I tried. This is not a matter of the "dealership" screwing you over, this is a case where someone produces something, and a third party, who HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCTION, breaks their contract and takes all of the profit.
Atari is still selling BG:EE through their site and Steam. Atari's makeing money. Beamdog, on the other hand, has been told, in essence "Gee, thanks for improving the game we bought the rights to. But, remember when we said you could make some money off of your work? Yeah, go screw yourselves, it's ours now, suckers!"
Give me one good reason Beamdog should be blamed for Atari breaching contract.
ONE.
Honestly, the amount of speculation in this thread is ridiculous.
Something is very, but VERY wrong here. Twice in fact, as not only Beamdog has been forbidden of make any further sale, but ATARI and STEAM are selling a game in which ATARI forbidden the release of new patches.
If the announcement given here in this forum is right, ATARI is clearly making a VERY unloyal commerce pratice and in the process is harming the righs of thousand of good faith customers.
About the disagree button, i was one of the first to ask it's removal, some ppl didn't knew the huge amount of problems introduced by that feature.
If this was Dragon Age 3 or something and it was EA making these excuses, nobody would be buying them for a second, we would all be saying "don't care, get it done." While on one hand it's nice to deal with these smaller developers where you feel connected to them and like you are part of a community, a side effect is the relationship becomes too "buddy buddy." This is a business/customer relationship, we need to remember that. I don't care that these guys seem like nice people that are trying hard anymore, I'm fed up. Since I'm sure they won't be offering me my $20 back (although considering they sold a broken product, it wouldn't be unreasonable to ask for it) I will settle for making sure they are aware of my disappointment.
So now there's actually nothing to release.
I'm going to take my own advice from another thread and stop feeding the troll. Even if you aren't trolling, it's obvious I'm not going to change your opinion.
Not everyone's going to like the game, or where it currently stands in development. We'll be the first to admit we have a bit of work to do (and the currently-on-hold patch is aimed at that), and expressing that view shouldn't be discounted.
Addressing people's concerns about the patch: there's a lot that we can't say about why the game's been pulled from Beamdog.com and the Apple AppStore, or why we can't work on or release the patch we've been building for the past several months. When we're able to give out more information we'll do the best we can to do so; until then, we ask that everyone try to be patient while we try to get this issue resolved.
But I guess you can never tell when Lawful Evil Wild Mages are at work.
Courts move very, VERY slowly, so let's hope cooler heads prevail and an agreement is reached.
My sister is a lawyer, and a colleague of hers worked on a divorce in which the parties spent thousands on billable hours fighting over a trailer worth a fraction of that. Here's hoping no one involved here makes the same mistake.
When playing poker, falling prey to the "sunk cost" temptation (also called being pot-committed) is the fastest way to go broke.
"Regardless of who's [sic] fault it is..."
Why doesn't it matter whose fault it is? When you try to cast Beamdog as a shady used car dealer, the implication there is that they're grifters out to make a quick buck without producing a quality product. This is clearly not the case at all, and the removal of product from their catalogue and the inability to service existing customers and products is something that is *clearly* out of Beamdog's control.
What you are basically doing here, is throwing a childish tantrum, *entirely* out of spite, then insist that what you're doing isn't spite-driven nor tantrum-like. And then, with a dramatic flourish, you declare that Beamdog has just permanently lost a customer.
No offense, Morehouse, but I sorta think Beamdog's better off without customers like you. 'Cuz right now, when they're up shit's creek and trying to get back on their feet, you did everything but offer them a hand up or a kind word.
Which is, really, part of the problem. Let's go back to your car analogy for a minute. This is less about buying a lemon than it is about trying to restore a classic car. It's a *lot* of hard work, mostly because computer hardware and software have both changed a lot since the mid 90s. Re-releasing a classic game, and making it multi-platform, is a huge, herculean undertaking, and anyone who expected it would work 100% perfectly upon release on all platforms everywhere is either totally unreasonable (I think this one's you) or they just don't know (or don't care) what they're talking about. You're getting a truckload of content for a price that is a fraction of what this generation's crappy new titles usually sell for. And let's remember that for your $20, you're getting a product you only have to download once, and *free* updates and patches all along the way. When was the last time you bought a car and got free service for life?
Let's get one thing absolutely clear, though: The most immediate cause of why we're having this discussion is that thing we haven't been informed of that prompted the removal of BG:EE. If whatever-happened-to-make-Beamdog-have-to-remove-download-and-purchase-links-for-BG:EE-and-cease-all-work-on-patches-and-BG2:EE hadn't happened, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
But I guess we could also indulge in your exercise a bit, and go even further back and say that if Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and the Silicon Valley generation hadn't invented personal computing as we know it today, and if Gary Gygax et al. hadn't invented Dungeons and Dragons, we wouldn't be having this discussion. "I don't care how valid and reasonable what you have to say is! Make my game work or I'm totally going to scream and urinate all over the floor! Waaaaaaahhhh!"
... is what I thought I heard you say just now.
For what it's worth, I'm sure that the fact that progress has been suspended indefinitely is equally unacceptable to the folks at Beamdog. Which is why I think it's unfair of you to blame them for something that is beyond their control. Perhaps when you start your own game production company, and you live up to these unforgiving standards you've set for Beamdog, I'll change my tune. But until then I think you really need to cut these people some slack, and maybe chill out with the latest iteration of Angry Birds or something. First of all, no, because people are going to line up for Dragon Age 3 no matter what delays or snags EA hits along the way. Or haven't you noticed how Diablo 3 is still chugging along despite the fact that it's one of the most troubled games in a generation?
Second of all, EA is the most hated corporation in the world, and yet they still make money hand-over-fist on virtually everything they publish. Okay. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. I'm gonna go kill Sarevok again.
But one point that i disagree, and maybe you reason it with me, is that Beamdog isn't free of responsibility in reason of the entire issue being out of the company hands.
Risk & Business, it's plain there and this issue can't fall on customer's back. From what i saw you writing i believe i don't even need to go deep in explanation here. If beamdog can't give the answers to some problems due to copyright restrictions, they should point the partner responsible for that and (if exist) a contact link for that partner. If that's not done, eventually the heat will fall in Beamdog's back and i can understand ppl that want and request professionalism in his/her dealings with the company.
However i would like to remember everyone that Beamdog 1° promisse even before start the project, in the early moments of the company (at may/june 2012) was that IF something happened with the company or if for some reason the company had to be shut down, they would free the game without any need of online check anymore, and taking the fact that every devs is somehow a modder, i don't think that we're going to be left in the dark with a bad investment. So even with all this going on, i somehow feel safe with my investment.
But ok, enought of that issue. Let's turn our attention to more important questions.
Is this issue with HASBRO..., or company X, so problematic to reach this level of damage? What copyrights where entitled to HASBRO..., or company X, and what can BG:EE do now without HASBRO..., or company X, limitations after you solve these issues? Apparently, before Adventure Y, we will have an Adventure X, where an old ally become a fierce enemy! How epic!!!
The other thing that's worth noting here is that the information blackout is not going to be permanent: eventually, as things sort themselves out, we'll learn more about what happened and why. And odds are good that Beamdog will eventually be allowed to continue its work -- although Beamdog isn't allowed to confirm or deny this or give us anything resembling a timetable.
I disagree that Beamdog has ownership of anything resembling "responsibility" for what's happened (although, once again, nobody knows anything specific about what it is that's happened, so perhaps I can't even say that for sure). But as a consumer -- and a relatively pleased consumer -- I'm completely willing to cut the company some slack. Like, a LOT of slack. The slackingest amount of slack that can possibly be cut for any single person and/or corporate entity at one time. Because it's crap like this that Beamdog willingly opted to expose itself to in order to bring us something that we clearly were interested in having access to again: not only do they have to untangle and sort through the ancient programming code of the Infinity engine, but they also have to deal with lawyers and rights-holders and suits (oh my). It's best to take that promise in context, though: when the promise was made, there didn't seem to be any question about Beamdog's right to do what they'd set out to do with Baldur's Gate. Addressing the current trend in games publishing, where a publishing house will put out a game with stringent DRM, and then when that house folds the game ceases to work because its DRM can't phone home to verify that the user can actually use the software. (all you Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 players: this is what you have to look forward to someday) These are all questions that no one outside of Beamdog can answer. Well, except perhaps for whoever the Other Party(ies) is/are. Was it Mister Hasbro in the Dining Room with the Lead Pipe? Or Colonel Atari in the Ballroom with the Revolver?...
Hey, if it's so, then at least the fix is usually free.
Now if the business plan is to generate relatively easy cash from sales of BG:EE and BG2:EE, so that the cash can be pumped into developing BG3 (from scratch). Then I'm very much on their side, and believe that it's a good business plan.
- Trent identified Atari as the party we are having trouble with in his statement to Kotaku
- Trent tweeted in January of this year, "We make less on a Steam sale than Steam does."
Carry on...Steam sales = money going to Atari. Now Atari may owe some of that money to other BG:EE stakeholders such as Beamdog, Hasbro, etc, but all those other stakeholders will have to join the line of Atari creditors and probably won't get all their money back.
Non steam sales = money going to Beamdog. Beamdog will then have to pay part of that money over to the various stakeholders, including Atari. But this means effectively that the BG:EE stakeholders all get paid in full and Atari (and by extension their existing creditors) get less.
It sucks, but Atari's administrators are probably legally obliged to take this action in order to protect Atari's creditors as a whole.
We can dream.
I believe that is just a small part of the: Atari needs money. Fast.
I'm not sure how taking old shaky Windows 95/98 era code and restructuring to work on 4 different platforms(one of which they were still working on when this mess happened and none of which are Windows 95/98), rewriting the rendering engine twice and creating all the extra content both present and future could be considered "easy money." Maybe in comparison to the reverse engineering efforts of the GemRB team, but as far as programming projects go, BGEE doesn't strike me as low hanging fruit. Not to mention that there are plenty of games that would have been less of a legal nightmare to gain access to.
All I know is that you don't put yourself in the middle of a tug-o-war match with three different legal teams just(or even primarily) to make a bit of money off a decidedly niche audience.