More than two weeks after it was taken down, Star Control: Origins has quietly reappeared on Steam’s storefront. No reason was given as to why it was allowed back, but this might be sign that the legal battle for the IP of Star Control is slowly but surely coming to a halt. As of this writing, the game has yet to be reinstated on GOG, which was removed simultaneously when it was taken off of Steam. Stardocks CEO, Brad Wardell, took to Twitter to announce the return to Steam.
It seems that Wardell was able to pull some strings to get Star Control: Origins back onto Steam, but he also stated that he was unable to disclose how that came about.
Stardock has been engaged in a legal dispute with two of the original creators of the series, Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford, since 2017, and it’s been an ugly one to say the least. The details and complications between the two parties has been well documented, going all the way down to the similarities of how the space travel is between Star Control 2, 3, and Origins. Things came to a head when Origins was removed from both Steam and GOG due to a DMCA notice they had received from Reiche and Ford.
Wardell made his feelings known after the removal of his companies game, going so far as to show the actual notices in blog post on Stardock’s website. However, Reiche and Ford fired back, stating that the DMCA notice was warranted. Their reasoning was that Stardock had purchased the rights to the Star Control name and the copyrights to Star Control 3, but not the content based off of the original Star Control or Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters.
Clearly something was missed when Stardock made the purchase in 2013. Reiche and Ford attempted to make their own game in the Star Control series called Ghost of the Precursors in 2017 and Stardock took notice of that. When they attempted to peacefully stop the two developers, Reiche and Ford retorted that they had blatantly infringed on Star Control 2 with Origins. Ever since then, we’ve been privy to a fierce legal battle between the two. Now that Star Control: Origins has returned to Steam, hopefully we will see a happy resolution to this ugly war.