New efforts!

[Codewalker]

At the very least people around here won't be able to wave it around as an excuse anymore.

[Solitaire]

Hopefully things will start to progress a little quicker now *fingers crossed*  ;)

[hurple]

My new theory:  NCSoft is Nemesis.

[General Idiot]

That wouldn't entirely surprise me.

[JoshexProxy]

Please keep this stuff in mind when you're writing insane theories on a board: If you post insane stuff often enough, people start believing you are insane. They stop caring. Your validity nears zero. People stop reading your posts entirely. People start putting you on ignore/block lists. Keep this in mind.

yeah, I stopped trying to let my talking work for me a few years back. That's when I realized how much of a nobody I am (at least until I make or do something of any value). kinda why I I'm so determined to finish my project, I am trying to accomplish something, if it were in CoX; an accolade. people will probably ignore/block me until I do something of value that they may want to try, and they'll end up hearing about it through other people who didn't block me. So in the end I'm not /that/ bothered, but I do get what you're saying and thankyou for your scrutiny.

Obviously what you actually saw was someone third-hand saying this, because Cryptic's ownership never expired (in fact, it remains even to this day): the game engine was leased in perpetuity - it was never purchased - there is no way that Cryptic's ownership COULD "expire". NCsoft never owned it. NCsoft leased it.

This is why people dismiss you out of hand.

and this is something I did not know, and now I do. and that makes this thing so much more complicated, NCSoft owns the game but not the engine, could be perfect world entertainment causing us grief. yeah, for all we know the THeM could have bought the server image from NCSoft outright and are now negotiating for rights to use the engine it was built with because the engine is technically part of it (at least with blender that's the case).

Going to have to make it two in a row.  NDA's are not just common in negotiations such as these, it is extremely rare when they aren't used.  Furthermore, they virtually always cover all aspects of the negotiations.

I should also point out that of all the NDA's I've ever signed (and I've signed more than a hundred of them) more than half explicitly included within the NDA's terms a restriction on disclosing the specific terms of the NDA itself.  And that includes the one I signed with NCSoft.  Its pretty standard language.

This is so far fetched it barely encapsulates a coherent thought.  I know these words sound to you like they express a logical idea, but not really.  I'm not sure where you got the idea that anyone would set up a "transfer company" just to hand someone a hard drive: that's nonsensical.  But even if that were true we're talking about legal entities on paper.  To suggest that this hypothetical legal entity was capable of being "used" to perform some other task for NCSoft is literally like suggesting that the reason why NCSoft doesn't want to part with City of Heroes is because they have secretly enslaved our characters into manning their help desks.  Those words also sound like they express a logical idea, but they don't.

My recollection was that the acquiring entity would set up a holding company which would become the legal entity that NCSoft would deal with in legal terms: they would sell and/or license the appropriate IP to the company, not a bunch of individuals.  Which makes perfect sense: you don't deal with people in situations like this, you deal with corporate entities.  This company wouldn't necessarily actually operate the game; for various legal reasons that holding company would then relicense the rights to a company that was devoted specifically to running the game itself.  Its sort of like how for legal purposes pretty much all movies are not actually produced directly by the movie studio that owns the rights to do so: a specific legal entity (basically a company) is created for the sole purpose of making that movie, and that movie only.  The studio grants the rights necessary to do so, provides funding, and gets a return on its investment in the company.  There are financial and legal reasons why its done this way that would be also generally applicable to acquiring the rights to, and then operating City of Heroes.

Somewhere in there, I think your train of thought met the six-thirty freight going the other way.

more like the late night express while my train of thought's driver just dropped off a caffeine buff.

"holding company", that's what I was trying to remember and didn't want to have to dig through titan to find it. For some reason I remembered it as a transfer company, I mixed up holding company and "to transfer to".

nb: Work for hire.  Whenever you work for a company where you are producing intellectual property like this, part of the work contract you sign explicitly states that anything you create while on the job is work for hire, which means you don't own it: your employer is the copyright owner by law the instant you create it.  The only way to create a problem like this would be hypothetically to steal someone else's work and contribute it as your own.  Which would create potential licensing issues, but it would also be a crime.

I was talking pre-NCSoft. for instance at cryptic, in an instance where cryptic removed certain aspects from the IP that they sold/licensed, yet they left the aspects in the actual game. At first it was in good faith when they worked together, but now.. now that there's money involved and they aren't in cooperation any more, they want a share. That or PWE decided they don't want the competition for CO and decided to create a legal hell over the sale.

Hot off the press: NCSoft and Nexon end 'business relationship':

http://www.mmogames.com/gamenews/nexon-ncsoft-end-alliance/

now this deserved its own topic. Could be good and bad, but considering this is what NCSoft was aiming for with the whole netmarble endeavor I'd say they decided it was in majority a good thing.

could make things faster for us, could slow things down. I hope the former.

on the outside, NCSoft might run CoX themselves now rather than sell it. but I think it's highly unlikely.

ugh this is a complicated deal, if NCSoft owns the server image and IP and Cryptic/PWE own the software precepts needed to run it and only submitted those to NCSoft in a license, then this thing could take a while. Basically the THeM need to do two deals at once and take care that both companies they are negotiating with are in-fact in communication and agreement. Otherwise it's a Catch 22 situation, if they buy the Server image they technically can't do it because the Game Engine is part of the server image and they don't own that, if they try to get the license to use the Game Engine reissued for themselves the problem is that they don't own the server image. unless it's an old engine cryptic doesn't care about and they could just sell it.

[MM3squints]

Hopefully things will start to progress a little quicker now *fingers crossed*  ;)

Would be nice, but I still until then, BE: Rising Tide > Fallout 4 > Xcom 2 is a nice game buffer until they do.

[pinballdave]

Call me optimistic, but this (Nexon sale of NCSoft stock) HAS to simplify the negotiations.

[KennonGL]

Josh's post is too big to easily quote, but..
If I remember correctly, the team is attempting to but the IP, which NC does own.
They are attempting lease the server image, which NC has a permanent lease to.
Now, whether NC has sub-leasing rights might be a valid question, but i would think so.
It was NC themselves that brought up the image in the first place wasn't it?
'

[Felderburg]

** "That we ever hear about."  In reality, virtually all NDAs are broken in some fashion, usually within some closed group of people.  A husband will tell his wife something they shouldn't, a sister will tell a brother, and you get a bunch of professionals in the same "biz" together and drunk, and some stuff will come out.  There's even a code among most professionals that ironically self-polices this sort of NDA leakage.  But I'm talking more about public disclosure.

It's true; because my mom is a Star Trek fan, I told her I was in the closed beta for Star Trek Online.

...she didn't care.

Its pretty standard language.

So much good stuff, and yet its =/= it's.  :P

My new theory:  NCSoft is Nemesis.

So everything in the game was literally a Nemesis Plot?

Yeah that makes sense.

[Angel Phoenix77]

Call me optimistic, but this (Nexon sale of NCSoft stock) HAS to simplify the negotiations.

Right there with you. I can see this as a good sign in that the team and Nc Soft can talk to each other about the deal easier.

[mrultimate]

At the very least people around here won't be able to wave it around as an excuse anymore.

+1

[Arcana]

I was talking pre-NCSoft. for instance at cryptic, in an instance where cryptic removed certain aspects from the IP that they sold/licensed, yet they left the aspects in the actual game. At first it was in good faith when they worked together, but now.. now that there's money involved and they aren't in cooperation any more, they want a share. That or PWE decided they don't want the competition for CO and decided to create a legal hell over the sale.

Perhaps you should try to think through the process of how exactly Cryptic could "remove" something from "the IP" and yet keep it in the game that they sold to NCSoft.  It almost sounds like you're saying Cryptic wrote a contract with NCSoft that said "we're selling you this thing over here, and that should be enough to run that thing over there, so go ahead and do that" instead of actually writing a contract that sold the actual thing itself, and NCSoft said "sure, what could possibly go wrong?"

When NCSoft took over the game, they bought all the IP associated with the game including the content.  The only thing they didn't buy outright was the game engine itself, for which they got a license to use and modify - probably because Cryptic didn't want to outright sell the engine because it contained technology they might have been using elsewhere, possibly just because it was something they wanted to retain ownership of.  The contracts involved would have stipulated that all of the content within City of Heroes at the time was part of the contract, and that all of the elements of the game engine as it existed at the time was part of the contract.  So how could Cryptic "hold back" anything?  Its not like the contracts would actually list all fifty million individual things in the game and Cryptic could sneakily withhold one.  In cases like this, the contract would explicitly state it covered *all* such elements that were a part of the game.

When you buy a car, you don't sign a contract that says the dealership is selling you a giant list of parts, and they could conceivably cheat you by not listing things like electrical wiring just to see if they can slip it past you.  You buy the car itself.  NCSoft bought the game as it existed (engine license previously noted).  If there was a piece of it Cryptic wanted to withhold that was actually in the game, they would have had to explicitly note that.  And then NCSoft would say "WTF" and refuse to sign that contract, because seriously, WTF.

[SemanticAntics]

[...] the reason why NCSoft doesn't want to part with City of Heroes is because they have secretly enslaved our characters into manning their help desks. 

I always wondered what my characters were doing when I wasn't around. Now I know.

[Surelle]

Hot off the press: NCSoft and Nexon end 'business relationship':

http://www.mmogames.com/gamenews/nexon-ncsoft-end-alliance/

Cool beans!  There's nothing but good news there, especially since two months after Nexon bought those shares, the CoX shuttering was announced. 

I always partially blamed them for that.  Perhaps they had nothing to do with it, but the timing seemed too close to be pure coincidence.

Well, three cheers! 

[Surelle]

At the very least people around here won't be able to wave it around as an excuse anymore.

Haha, that's true enough.   ;)

[Brigadine]

Call me optimistic, but this (Nexon sale of NCSoft stock) HAS to simplify the negotiations.

If it doesn't, NCsoft hasn't been in good faith this whole time.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

yeah, I stopped trying to let my talking work for me a few years back. That's when I realized how much of a nobody I am (at least until I make or do something of any value). kinda why I I'm so determined to finish my project, I am trying to accomplish something, if it were in CoX; an accolade. people will probably ignore/block me until I do something of value that they may want to try, and they'll end up hearing about it through other people who didn't block me. So in the end I'm not /that/ bothered, but I do get what you're saying and thankyou for your scrutiny.

What you should've done is started researching and checking your facts before letting your talking work for you. The reason your talking doesn't work for you isn't that you haven't accomplished enough in publishing games or the like (Derek Smart's talking rarely works for him and having multiple published games hasn't helped him at all), it's more related to how frequently you make assertions that are provably flat-out wrong or read like garbled versions of actual events that sometimes suggest you didn't understand what you read before posting about it. Your talking doesn't work for you because of what is said, not who is saying it or how it's said. Not that i personally mind and i have no intention of ignoring you because many of the posts correcting or refuting your assertions have been fascinating and informative, frequently adding detail and nuance that i either didn't know or had forgotten even when i was already familiar with the subject(s). In that regard you're a brilliant foil/boke for the forums' manzai routines.

[Stitchified]

Obviously what you actually saw was someone third-hand saying this, because Cryptic's ownership never expired (in fact, it remains even to this day): the game engine was leased in perpetuity - it was never purchased - there is no way that Cryptic's ownership COULD "expire". NCsoft never owned it. NCsoft leased it.

This is why people dismiss you out of hand.

Hold da phone! What exactly did NCsoft lease from Cryptic? I myself was always under the impression that NCsoft was the publisher of CoH and by extension the owner due to them owning Paragon Studios because Cryptic sold the rights to CoH to NCsoft... If that's still the case, then what did NCsoft lease from Cryptic?

[MM3squints]

Hold da phone! What exactly did NCsoft lease from Cryptic? I myself was always under the impression that NCsoft was the publisher of CoH and by extension the owner due to them owning Paragon Studios because Cryptic sold the rights to CoH to NCsoft... If that's still the case, then what did NCsoft lease from Cryptic?

It was said in that quote, the game engine.

[Stitchified]

Call me optimistic, but this (Nexon sale of NCSoft stock) HAS to simplify the negotiations.

Hey now, if that's optimism, then what do you call everyone's hopes? Super optimism? :P