Court Returns Stolen Stargate MMO To Founder 128
An anonymous reader writes "A Maricopa County Superior Court judge has ended a bitter dispute over control of a Mesa video game company's assets, effectively giving the online combat game Stargate Resistance and the long-delayed MMORPG Stargate Worlds back to Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment. Fresh Start tried to remove all of Cheyenne Mountain's assets from its offices on Feb. 24, but was prevented from doing so when the police arrived. Networking cords had been cut and left to hang loose, and PC cases were empty shells that had been gutted of components such as hard drives. But time may finally have run out for Worlds, Cheyenne Mountain's signature project: The ruling comes as MGM Studios has apparently terminated the license it granted in 2006 for the Arizona company to produce video games based on the Stargate movies and TV shows."
Re:So stealing does pay. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I hate Journalists (Score:5, Informative)
From reading the linked articles it seems like Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment was in Chap 11. Then someone (maybe a group of investors?) illegally sold the assets of the company to the new gaming companies for $100,000. It appears the court said that action was illegal both in terms of procedure and perhaps value as well. The motives are where the real dirt is, and I suspect you're not going to get a straight answer on that until after all the lawsuits are settled.
Re:I mourn the loss (Score:3, Informative)
Stargate blew. All of its plots refer to ancient structures and cultures, saying "aliens did it". When one gets old and tired, they get out a new culture, and label it with "aliens did it," and move on, as if they've done something clever. And the things they refer to? They aren't "mysteries." We know who built the pyramids, and why, and when, and largely how.
What it was was bland, generic scifi fit for mass consumption. It lacked the campy retro appeal of the original run of Star Trek, lacked the talented writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and lacked the production values of Battlestar Galactica.
They tried, too little, too late, to stop hemorrhaging viewers, by adding continuity, villains that looked like Twilight rejects, and lots and lots of big, but generally poorly executed space battles, but it was too little, too late. They managed two spinoffs. One was the same crap recycled, except set in a new location. The other was quite different from the rest of the series, which some might call "ballsy" or "daring", but those people would be idiots. Stargate: Universe is trying very hard to be Battlestar Galactica, but isn't quite managing it.
To sum up, a quote attributed (probably falsely) to Samuel Johnson, "It is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
Re:Crossover (Score:5, Informative)
(The version of B5 they had their hands on even had a shapeshifting security officer... )
Re:So hard work doesn't pay. (Score:5, Informative)
I was gone by then, but based on what I know of the people who started it, Fresh Start's goal was to continue supporting a game they believed in. While still at Cheyenne, they completed and released Resistance quickly under terrible circumstances (circumstances that I fled), only to be betrayed by Gary Whiting with a bankruptcy filing the instant they brought the company its first revenue ever. Then they managed to form a company to continue supporting the game. They kept the servers up and even released new maps and improved some of the graphics assets.
This article is 100% Mr. Whiting's side of the story. While at Cheyenne I formed the opinion that he is a very shady individual, but I was pretty low on the totem pole, so I don't know what was really going on.
What I know for sure, however, is that Resistance would never have come out without the people behind Fresh Start, and it probably would have been completely unsupported from the moment of release (possibly unplayable, with the servers down) without the formation of Fresh Start. So I'm going to give them a pretty fucking big benefit of the doubt.
Oh, and based on the financial situation when I left, the people working for Fresh Start were probably getting paid next to nothing, if that much. So obviously "stealing" pays big time.
Re:I hate Journalists (Score:3, Informative)
It's even stranger, in that Gary Whiting, had ANOTHER company, Garvick Properties, LLC that went bankrupt. Due to Whiting's shenanigans, "Cheyenne Mountain Games, Inc" (a subsidiary of "Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, Inc") got dragged into the bankruptcy. As near as I can tell, that caused the subsidiary to go bankrupt too.
Meanwhile, Tim Jensen, one time president of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment got caught by the SEC trying to move assets between two OTHER companies he owned/controlled. He's the one accused of orchestrating asset transfer in THIS case, too. Apparently the courts agreed in some fashion, since they forced the return of the assets. (Jensen is also accused of "Stalling Stargate Worlds for years", but it doesn't really sound like it was ready for prime time anyway....)
The articles (as a whole) are real hazy about divisions between CM Games and CM Entertainment, which might well reflect some ambiguity on the ground.