Ares Games Loses Battlestar Galactica

[solariabsg39Participant 94xp 3]

Ares have just announced that the licence for their Battlestar Galactica Starship Battles game has been discontinued.  The two rules expansions will be available in PDF format only, and all upcoming miniature designs including the long-anticipated Classic line have been scrapped.

[soulman 2945xp 0]

Well that was shot down like having a bandit on your tail…….

[templar007 52376xp 0]

I was afraid this would happen.

 

Guess I’ll focus on Star Wars Armada!

[gustavowoltmannParticipant 10xp 0]

It’s a very good game, After free my work, I play this. Because of its very interesting and mind sharing games. I will share this post with Gustavo Woltmann

[phaidknott 7023xp 0]

Wow it seems the death nell these days to try and launch a game using one of the big studio IPs. I remember back when Agents of Gaming lost their IP for Babylon 5, I think the quote from the studio went along the lines of “the legal fees to renew the licence wouldn’t be covered by the expected revenue generated” (or something like that).

Although it might be big news for a small company to produce a wargame on these IPs (and the creators pour their heart and soul into producing them), it’s small potatoes for these studios.

Lesson here (yet again) seems to be don’t use a well known studio IP unless you are ready for the rug to be pulled from under you at a moments notice.

[limburger 21708xp 0]

Here’s the link with the info :

Battlestar Galactica – Starship Battles game license to end

that sucks …

I always wonder what the heck the IP holders are smoking when they pull stunts like that.

You’ve got this golden opportunity to promote your IP and make money for very little effort and then … *poof* you decide to end it ? Sure … technically it probably is Ares who couldn’t continue due the the cost of the license vs the profit they had (especially given the Event which killed any opportunity to grow), but that’s just shifting the blame..

It’s hard to blame Ares for not doing their best, because they are a small company and I doubt they had the budget to promote this more than they did.

[totsuzenheniParticipant 5651xp 0]

From the packaging Battlestar Galactica – Starship Battles looks like it’s definitely not X-Wing, so perhaps they’ve reflected on X-Wing’s changing fortunes.

[torros 23816xp 0]

I wonder what the other side of the story is

[templar007 52376xp 0]

A safe bet would be that someone else is making a play for the IP.

 

Maybe Asmodee.  ?

[limburger 21708xp 0]

or maybe the IP-manager changed and he didn’t like the deal his predecessor had made with Ares …

I mean … why assume malice when simple corporate political stupidity is as likely to be the reason why.

And yeah … hearing both sides would be nice, but I doubt that we ever will unless someone else announces how they got the ‘exclusive’ rights.

[pojoh 2063xp 0]

This is painful.   Not only is this an IP that is close to my geeky heart, but the game mechanics and the quite of the product were second to none.   It really was THAT good.

What hurts as well I suppose is that if Ares were to Kickstart a new wave of ships.. to help financially.. I believe it would of been successful enough to do so (especially for the original series which many were clamoring for) and recoup the licensing cost (I would think anyway, not like I know what licensing costs are these days).    Its just… heart wrenching.    I am glad I have enough ships to keep me going… but my wallet was willing for more.

[templar007 52376xp 1]

I wonder if ARES will create its own SciFi universe and keep using the current game mechanics that they have created?

[limburger 21708xp 0]

@pojoh Kickstarter is not the answer.
All that would do is act like a short term marketing campaign to get the most wanted content to people.
Post kickstarter there’d be too few people left that would continue to buy into the system.

Besides … given that they had planned releases I’d say they were convinced there was enough demand to get that far.

The thing is that we don’t know what exactly caused the end of the license.
If both parties had wanted to continue then there’d be a way.

I’ve seen software licensing that accounted for the fact that not every company could sell enough of their product at a competing price so the requirement to pay royalties only applies if expected sales are above a magic number.

You’d think that IP licensing could include such things in order to accommodate companies that aren’t Hasbro or other giants in the industry …

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