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General discussionDescent 1+2 & Descent 3 - Removed From Sale(286 posts)(286 posts)
(286 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted December 30, 2015
Hi Matt

Thanks for the information which is very informative and it is sad that you guys have not received any royalties in almost 10 years of the game being sold which i can understand why you had to do this. The fault lies with the monster that is interplay here they have taken our money but not passed it on.

Matt i have your games in my catalog and i love them they are truly classic games and well worth buying.

I do hope you will be able to sort all this out and that the games will be available to buy again so others can enjoy these fantastic games in the future and that they also do not become lost like so many titles have become in legal hell.
Post edited December 30, 2015 by aluinie
Posted December 30, 2015
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mtoschlog: ...
Thank you for the explanation!
While it is a real pity to see the games removed from GOG (and from any other stores, once Interplay stops playing with things that are not theirs), know that if the case is really as you describe, I completely agree with what you did.
I have been in a similar situation myself, and it has been a source of endless pain, serious troubles and an almost insurmountable obstacle. Too many people like to exploit their position to avoid paying what is due; I really hope you can get back what you deserve, and I also hope that -if possible- you can make a deal with GOG and all the other necessary parts to sell again those masterpieces. It would be a real pity to see them lost in licensing hell like many other great games form the past.
Post edited December 30, 2015 by Enebias
Posted December 30, 2015
This is why the contracts need to be established between all parties involved, money aspect covered too.
I mean instead GOG paying 70% to interplay only and then Interplay pay whatever percentage to the developer of the game and other whatever parties, they should have made a contract with GOG paying 35% to interplay and the rest of 35% directly to Parallax (these 50-50% are examples, I don't know what are the real percentages deal between interplay and parallax).
This way you can avoid this stupid greedy situations in which the publisher doesn't pay the mandatory royalties to developers (see interplay in this case, see Topware etc).
imo
Post edited December 30, 2015 by mobutu
Posted December 30, 2015
The thing i fear now is who else is Interplay not paying. Could we see more of these games having to come off the market due to Interplay not paying the developers. My feel at the moment is not to buy any more Interplay games unless it ca be proved that the original guys who created the games are getting money for their work.

It pains me to have to boycott companies but i will not stand by and see developers lose out on money that is due to them.
Posted December 30, 2015
And there I was, thinking that Interplay was a company worth supporting.
My respect for them is fading. Not quite gone, but fading.
Posted December 30, 2015
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mtoschlog: ...
Matt Toschlog & Mike Kulas
Parallax Software
Geebus! How bogus of interplay! Thanks very much for the info. I hope you get any royalties you are due and some penalty money from interplay as well! I personally think their disregard warrants a forfeit of any right they have to the Descent tm, but, that's just wishful thinking I suppose. I hope this resolves as ideally as it can for you at this point.
Posted December 30, 2015
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benmar: And there I was, thinking that Interplay was a company worth supporting.
My respect for them is fading. Not quite gone, but fading.
Interplay is NOT worth supporting. They're doing nothing but squeezing the last cents out of other people's work. The only good thing they've done in decades was signing up with and jumpstarting GOG (to, you guessed it, squeeze money out of other people's work).

inb4 "but people agreed to these exploitative schemes, so it's fair": No, it isn't. A good use of money, at any given moment, is one that contributes to more awesome art being made. Legal != good (and it isn't even legal in this case). Write your Congressperson.

Now, I'm not saying that people are morally obliged to pirate Interplay games. When I buy an old game on GOG, I support GOG in maintaining their library of DRM-free games, and the money which goes to non-creator rightsholders is GOG's expenses. (But if people think paying 70% to exploitative assholes is unjustifiable, that's fine, too.)
Post edited December 30, 2015 by Starmaker
Posted December 30, 2015
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mtoschlog: Hey, Folks. Here's the story.

Parallax Software still exists and still owns the copyrights to the Descent games. Under our 21-year-old agreement, Interplay has the exclusive rights to sell Descent and Descent II, and they have been doing so on Good Old Games and Steam.

The problem is that Interplay has not paid to Parallax any royalties since 2007. We've talked to them about this numerous times over the years, and finally took action this fall. We served Interplay official notice that they were in breach of the contract, and when they still failed to pay we terminated the agreement.

This means that Interplay has lost the right to sell the Descent games, which is why they came down from GOG. (We're not sure why they're still on Steam; they shouldn't be.)

Interplay does, however, still own the Descent trademark, which they are free to use or license as they see fit (such as for Descent: Underground) as long as they don't violate our copyrights.

As for whether Descent and Descent II will be available for purchase again, we hope so. We'd be very happy to work things out with Interplay.

Matt Toschlog & Mike Kulas
Parallax Software
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toddconley: Matt, Mike - Does this mean you have the rights to sell the original Descent games? If so - I'm hoping you'll form a partnership with the folks that have made the recent patches (D1-Retro) and release a truly network-playable steam-integrated game on steam.
Retro is based to a large part on DXX-Rebirth (which I created 10 years ago) which in turn is based on D1X and D2X. So there is a huge chain of programmers who contributed countless hours towards these projects in the past 15 years. As much as I'd love to see such a port on Steam, GOG and such, it would require the permission of all the developers involved in these projects so we don't end up in a situation that is very similar to this one.

Personally I'd love to see the ports staying free (as in freedom) as this was the intention of most of the developers: Creating free software.
Post edited December 30, 2015 by 8BitChris
Posted December 30, 2015
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aluinie: The thing i fear now is who else is Interplay not paying. Could we see more of these games having to come off the market due to Interplay not paying the developers. My feel at the moment is not to buy any more Interplay games unless it ca be proved that the original guys who created the games are getting money for their work.

It pains me to have to boycott companies but i will not stand by and see developers lose out on money that is due to them.
That's what I feared when reading about the situation too.
But my next thought was the exact opposite. Buy the games NOW while you still can! Funny how different we can be. :)
Posted December 30, 2015
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aluinie: The thing i fear now is who else is Interplay not paying. Could we see more of these games having to come off the market due to Interplay not paying the developers. My feel at the moment is not to buy any more Interplay games unless it ca be proved that the original guys who created the games are getting money for their work.

It pains me to have to boycott companies but i will not stand by and see developers lose out on money that is due to them.
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Tarm: That's what I feared when reading about the situation too.
But my next thought was the exact opposite. Buy the games NOW while you still can! Funny how different we can be. :)
but now we know interplay possibly screwed up and we are buying games to which they have no rights to? Legally we can be held accountable now and get our games removed, its like the whole sniper elite 3 debacle
Posted December 30, 2015
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Tarm: That's what I feared when reading about the situation too.
But my next thought was the exact opposite. Buy the games NOW while you still can! Funny how different we can be. :)
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smrtgi19: but now we know interplay possibly screwed up and we are buying games to which they have no rights to? Legally we can be held accountable now and get our games removed, its like the whole sniper elite 3 debacle
I'm no lawyer and don't know if customers can be held accountable for buying from a legit shop. Seems a bit far fetched what you say. It's different in different countries too.
Posted December 30, 2015
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jbartus: There is a lot of idle speculation being made in this thread with people jumping to conclusions with no basis. Konrad gave us very vague statements about this development.
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mtoschlog: Hey, Folks. Here's the story.

Parallax Software still exists and still owns the copyrights to the Descent games. Under our 21-year-old agreement, Interplay has the exclusive rights to sell Descent and Descent II, and they have been doing so on Good Old Games and Steam.

The problem is that Interplay has not paid to Parallax any royalties since 2007. We've talked to them about this numerous times over the years, and finally took action this fall. We served Interplay official notice that they were in breach of the contract, and when they still failed to pay we terminated the agreement.

This means that Interplay has lost the right to sell the Descent games, which is why they came down from GOG. (We're not sure why they're still on Steam; they shouldn't be.)

Interplay does, however, still own the Descent trademark, which they are free to use or license as they see fit (such as for Descent: Underground) as long as they don't violate our copyrights.

As for whether Descent and Descent II will be available for purchase again, we hope so. We'd be very happy to work things out with Interplay.

Matt Toschlog & Mike Kulas
Parallax Software
I really hope they sort this stuff out.
Well anyway thanks for posting this, do you have the original source or a link to where this comes from? Thanks in advance :O
Posted December 30, 2015
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Tarm: That's what I feared when reading about the situation too.
But my next thought was the exact opposite. Buy the games NOW while you still can! Funny how different we can be. :)
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smrtgi19: but now we know interplay possibly screwed up and we are buying games to which they have no rights to? Legally we can be held accountable now and get our games removed, its like the whole sniper elite 3 debacle
That would depend on the applicable law in this case. My reading of the situation is that while it's unfortunate, it's not our problem, nor is it GoG's problem - the consumers and GoG are innocent parties - so we wouldn't be held accountable.
Posted December 30, 2015
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jbartus: There is a lot of idle speculation being made in this thread with people jumping to conclusions with no basis. Konrad gave us very vague statements about this development.
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mtoschlog: Hey, Folks. Here's the story.

Parallax Software still exists and still owns the copyrights to the Descent games. Under our 21-year-old agreement, Interplay has the exclusive rights to sell Descent and Descent II, and they have been doing so on Good Old Games and Steam.

The problem is that Interplay has not paid to Parallax any royalties since 2007. We've talked to them about this numerous times over the years, and finally took action this fall. We served Interplay official notice that they were in breach of the contract, and when they still failed to pay we terminated the agreement.

This means that Interplay has lost the right to sell the Descent games, which is why they came down from GOG. (We're not sure why they're still on Steam; they shouldn't be.)

Interplay does, however, still own the Descent trademark, which they are free to use or license as they see fit (such as for Descent: Underground) as long as they don't violate our copyrights.

As for whether Descent and Descent II will be available for purchase again, we hope so. We'd be very happy to work things out with Interplay.

Matt Toschlog & Mike Kulas
Parallax Software
Welcome to GOG.com Matt Toschlog! Off topic question: Since Descent 1 & 2 is open source. Does Descent 3's source code exist? If so will it be released under GPL just like it's previous two installments? I would like to see Descent 3 get ported to Mac and Linux and having advanced user level and mod support just like Doom, Dxx-Rebirth, eduke32, and anything else. Can it be done?

I would like for us to see Descent 3 gets future Windows OS support like forever.
Post edited December 30, 2015 by DustFalcon1985
Posted December 31, 2015
Interplay not paying royalties? Oh man, you just have to love Interplay!

Bastards/
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General discussionDescent 1+2 & Descent 3 - Removed From Sale(286 posts)(286 posts)
(286 posts)