Star Control designers Paul Reiche III and Robert Frederick Ford have defended their decision to issue a DMCA takedown against Star Control: Origins, which resulted in the title being pulled from sale earlier this week.

Origins developer Stardock has been engaged in a lengthy legal battle with Reiche and Ford over the trademarks and copyrights to the Star Control franchise, and criticized the duo for choosing to “bypass” the legal system “by issuing vague DMCA take-down notices to Steam and GOG.”

“We attempted to get a preliminary art injunction to prevent them from issuing more false DMCA take down notices. Unfortunately, the court ruled that it wasn’t the courts’ place to intervene in the area of DMCAs. Thus, here we are.” wrote Stardock on the Steam forums. 

“To my knowledge, never in the history of our industry has anyone attempted to use the DMCA system to take down a shipping game before. For those not familiar with copyright law, you cannot copyright ideas, individual or short phrases, concepts, mechanics, or game designs.” 

With Stardock having said its piece, Reiche and Ford have now shared their version of events, and reiterated their view that Star Control: Origins is “substantially similar” to their work on Star Control II. 

Starting from the top, the designers confirmed they agreed to refrain from serving new DMCA notices while a judge looked at an injunction filed by Stardock, but that after the studio’s motion was denied, they had every right to push forward with their DMCA takedown against Origins. 

“As you might guess, we are going to continue defending our copyrights against what we feel and contend in the lawsuit is infringement by Stardock, so we served new DMCA notices late last week,” commented Reiche and Ford.

“[Stardock CEO] Brad Wardell has said repeatedly ‘you can’t copyright a word’ which seems to mean that that if you break down creative work into its component parts, those component parts are too trivial to be protected.

“Of course that’s crazy. Copyright protects original literary and artistic works that are simply specific combination of words, or images, or other content.”

The pair also emphasized the importance of understanding what Stardock actually purchased when it acquired the ‘Star Control Franchise’ in Atari’s bankruptcy auction. Indeed, they claim Star Control only actually bought the registration to the trademark ‘Star Control,’ and the copyright to the original parts of Star Control 3.

“The bankruptcy paperwork was very specific that anything not listed was excluded. Not Star Control, Star Control II, the unreleased Star Control 4, packaging art — none of that was included in the auction,” they added. 

Getting to the nitty gritty, the duo also claim Stardock received a copy of their 1998 contract with Star Control 3 developer Accolade so it could understand the exact terms under which material had been licensed.

That contract apparently didn’t grant any additional property to Stardock, but the studio now claims it holds all of Accolade’s rights and has also applied for “tons of trademarks” on the names of aliens Riche and Ford invented in Star Control and Star Control II. 

What’s more, Reiche and Ford also assert that Star Control: Origins has copied certain gameplay and design elements from Star Control II, thus directly infringing upon their original work. 

“Besides the evidence of infringement identified in our most recent filings with the court, let’s compare the expression in a very limited part of the gameplay — interstellar travel. One would presume that Stardock would either make entirely new gameplay for Origins or base it upon the original parts of SC3,” they wrote, referencing the comparison table pictured below.

“It’s clear to us that Stardock chose to make Origins substantially similar to Star Control II instead of using the original material they purchased in Star Control 3. We don’t claim to have a copyright on all interstellar travel, but we do have a copyright on the specific way we expressed interstellar travel in Star Control II. 

“We see many such examples in Star Control: Origins where its expression is substantially similar to and/or derivative of our copyright-protected work, without our permission.”

In February last year, there was a rumour floating about Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 would be released on the Nintendo Switch. In the end, Treyarch’s design director David Vonderhaar ended up laughing off a question about the title possibly coming to the hybrid video game system.

Although Activision doesn’t appear to be bringing the popular first-person shooter across to the Switch anytime soon, the third-party industry giant has seemingly gone to the extent of paying respects to Nintendo’s latest hardware. In the latest entry, players can use real money and in-game currency to purchase unique gestures. One of these emote-like actions is called “Mobile Ops”. Using this action during a match will have your character pull out a portable game system and start playing it.

According to a post on ResetEra, this portable device is apparently a tribute to the Nintendo Switch. As you can see in the first image, it’s matte black, has two analogue sticks, a control pad, shoulder buttons and four circular buttons. We would go to the extent of saying it even looks somewhat similar to an earlier Wii U GamePad prototype.

The game featured on the device is Dead Ops Arcade 2: Cyber’s Avengening, a playable retro-style game from past Call of Duty entries. Disappointingly, it’s not directly playable on this device. It’s sad to say, but at this rate, this might be the closest we ever get to seeing Call of Duty on the Nintendo Switch.

Do you agree think this is a subtle reference to the Switch? Would you like to see a Call of Duty game eventually released on Nintendo’s new device? Tell us below.

Last year, Bethesda announced DOOM Eternal would be coming to the Nintendo Switch at QuakeCon. Once again, the studio handling the Switch port will be the specialists at Panic Button.

The hellish soundtrack for the game is being handled by the returning composer Mick Gordon. In what is quite possibly related news, Gordon is calling on the help of a heavy metal choir for an unspecified project.

Providing more information in the below video, Gordon said it wasn’t a contest, but rather an “open invitation”. Candidates will need to be at least 18 years of age and be able to provide a demo of their “killer metal” voice. They’ll also have to fund their own trip to Austin, Texas. The recording session will be a paid and credited gig. If you’re interested, you’ll need to apply before 1st February, with the recording taking place in the first week of March.

As noted by Polygon, Bethesda Softworks officially announced Mick Gordon as the DOOM Eternal composer during E3 2018. With the game expected to arrive later this year, it seems highly likely the hellish choir he requires is for this upcoming release.

What do you make of this? Are you willing to lend your hellish vocals to this unspecified project? Tell us below.

We’ve already heard how Pokémon GO captured close to $800 million in global revenue last year and now the marketing analysis firm Sensor Tower reports Nintendo’s mobile games made a total of $348 million in 2018.

According to the firm, $117 million was made in the fourth quarter alone – resulting in a 47 percent increase compared to the same period in 2017. This surge is thanks to the release of Dragalia Lost in September, which made around $58.4 million, even though it had a limited launch in five territories.

Fire Emblem Heroes was still Nintendo’s top performing mobile game in 2018, accounting for 66 percent of the Japanese company’s mobile revenue. The game was originally released in February 2017 and has continually proven to be the biggest moneymaker out of all of Nintendo’s smartphone offerings.

Other Nintendo mobile releases include Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Super Mario Run. Pocket Camp made an estimated total of $48.6 million in 2018 – with its revenue down by 44 percent exactly a year after its November release in 2017. Super Mario’s paid version of Run made around $10 million last year and originally arrived in September 2016.

In 2019, Nintendo is expected to release the Mario Kart Tour “service” on mobile before the end of March.

The Messenger was one of the indie highlights of 2018. The developer Sabotage poured a lot of love into this title while drawing inspiration from the original Ninja Gaiden game. If you haven’t already played it, you might want to hurry up. As previously announced, The Messenger will be embarking on a sunny holiday in the form of a free DLC pack titled ‘Picnic Panic’ at some point in 2019.

Based on a recent ‘Q&A’ video featuring the game’s director Thierry Boulanger, more content for The Messenger could also be on the way. The upcoming free DLC was described by Boulanger as an “experiment” to test the waters and was intended to be part of a bigger DLC pack, divided into three separate chapters.

If the free DLC pack ‘Picnic Panic’ can drive sales of the main game and increases its overall value, it could potentially allow the team to keep on releasing more DLC for the title. For more information about this content, view the full video below:

Are you excited to be going on a sunny holiday with The Messenger this year? Tell us in the comments.

A famous melody which has appeared in multiple Nintendo games over the years is Totaka’s Song. It was originally created by Nintendo composer and sound director Kazumi Totaka and first appeared in X – a 1992 shooter on the original Game Boy – as a secret. Since then, it’s become somewhat of an iconic track added into nearly every game Totaka has worked on.

While it’s already common knowledge this song is in Pikmin 2, nearly 15 years after the original GameCube title was released, a second version of the Totaka’s famous song has now been discovered by a YouTuber known as Quote Balrog. It can now not only be heard on the treasure salvage screen if you wait for a number of minutes, but can also be listened to if you enter any cave in Pikmin 2 and unplug the memory card at the same time. Doing this will bring up the memory card warning screen and if you wait for around four minutes, you’ll eventually hear the song play. Have a listen below:

Are you surprised it took this long to locate this song (again) in Pikmin 2? What other games do you remember this classic tune from? Tell us below.