Editing Star Control (section)

== Star Control: Origins ==

When Accolade went belly-up, they got bought up by Infogrames, who later renamed themselves as Atari, and then ''they'' went bankrupt and sold a lot of their IPs to cover their debts. The Star Control trademark and IP for the third game, but not the copyrights to the first two games as those still belong to Toys for Bob, were sold to Stardock, a software studio/publisher known for ''[[Galactic Civilizations]]'', ''[[Elemental]]'', and ''Sins of a Solar Empire''.

With the rights to the name but not the content, Stardock were basically making a Spiritual Successor that just happens to have an official name attached to it, resulting in the not-quite-prequel, not-quite-alternate-universe of humanity taking the first step into the interstellar scene, meeting new friends and enemies. The game takes some story cues from Star Control II, the fighting mechanics of Spacewar, and the planet exploration and ship customization of EA's ''Spore''.

All in all, for a game that can’t use established characters or species, Stardock made a decent game, with good gameplay and writing that manages to capture the feel of the originals. While it can never live up to the expectations of Star Control II, most agree that Stardock lived up to their pedigree detailed above. Unfortunately, they [[derp|proceeded to bugger all that thanks to the shit they pulled right after]].

At one point, Stardock requested help/a license/input from Toys for Bob, who refused. Toys for Bob then announced they were starting development on a sequel of ''The Ur-Quan Masters'' (very specifically not Star Control) titled ''Ghosts of the Precursors'' just as Origins was entering early access. Since then, Stardock and Toys for Bob have countersued one another over who owns Star Control's copyrights/IP, with Stardock going so far as to hijack Toys for Bob's license to GOG to sell original PC versions of the first 2 Star Control games and claim that the actual creators of Star Control were a nameless team of programmers for Accolade. The fact that they sued Toys For Bob in a lawyer-assisted fraud scheme (see below) and then tried to release DLCs based on their work (which they didn't and still don't have the rights to) probably burned that bridge anyway.

All of this has fucked with their lawsuit, according to recent legal documents, as seen [https://twitter.com/flubbus/status/1079052955922374657 here].