If you talk to Brad, you can just feel the disappointment over all of this. For much of his life, they were his idols. They were part of the reason he went into game development! This entire scenario really disillusioned him.
Remember, he offered to sell them everything from Atari at cost just in the hopes they'd make a new Star Control game. They declined.
He asked them to work with Stardock to make SCO. They declined (but only after being told no by Activison, interestingly enough. They implied there was a legitimate interest in working on the project if you read the emails).
He kept them in the loop the entire time and declined using the original races because they asked him not to and he respected that.
He wanted to make a studio built around them to work on a proper SC3 and beyond.
Then they started claiming to have rights to terms like Super Melee. That Stardock couldn't sell the classic games, not even SC3. YEARS after this all started. They undercut Stardock in the announcements of Ghosts, declaring it the sequel to STAR CONTROL 2, violating the trademark that Stardock paid for and worked on for years now. They hired an expensive crisis PR firm to go around calling Brad, personally, a thief and scumbag.
I grew up on the Star Control games. I loved The Horde. This has all left a bad taste in my mouth as far as Fred and Paul are concerned. It sucks. Yet I can't blame Brad. He has to defend his trademark and the work his people have put into SCO. And, frankly, he's the likely only source for new Star Control for the next decade. Not because he intends to stop F&P from making their game, but because they've found every and any excuse not to for two decades.
