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Mechant of Venus: Update from Stronghold Games Hot

ubarose Written by ubarose     December 16, 2011     1725     

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Stronghold Games Newsletter

As many of our customers already know, back in October while we were in Essen, we announced a reprint of Merchant of Venus, a Richard Hamblen designed game, after 18 months of discussions directly with Mr. Hamblen.

To our surprise, a day later Fantasy Flight Games also announced a reprint of Merchant of Venus.  Of course, under normal conditions, with licensing contracts granting exclusivity, this should not have been possible.  Fantasy Flight Games had obtained their license of the game from a different party, and of course neither FFG nor Stronghold Games was aware of each other's pursuit of this game license.

Stronghold Games has been attempting to work out a resolution with the other licensing party since this first came to light.  We will continue to work with them and all interested parties until an amicable resolution is found.

For their part, Fantasy Flight Games has been fair and honest regarding the situation.  Neither FFG nor Stronghold Games wished for such an incident to arise, and both companies agree that this is an unfortunate situation in which both companies now find themselves. 

Very importantly, Stronghold Games holds no ill-will towards Fantasy Flight Games.  We are big fans of this fine company, and we want all of our friends and supporters to be fans of FFG as well.

At this time we can not provide an estimate as to when this will be resolved.  However, we will provide our customers with any update that we can as we continue to work toward an amicable resolution.

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Comments (6)
  • 2011-12-16 13:49:03 | avatarDeath and Taxis

    Huh. Was wondering where this had got up to. One of the online sites I buy from has the FFG version up for pre-order, so I kinda figured Stronghold had relented. Guess not.

  • 2011-12-16 14:52:44 | avatarubarose  - re:

    Sounds like Stronghold is trying to settle with Hasbro and FFG is going forward with publishing MoV.

  • 2011-12-16 15:08:23 | avatarSagrilarus

    It sounds like Stronghold is carefully directing their fire.

    S.

  • 2011-12-18 18:01:02 | avatarlewpuls

    These rights ought to be quite clear, because a contract ought to specify that when a game goes out of print (definition of that often includes "sold less than xx in yy period") then the rights revert to the designer.

    But companies often don't know what they have. When I came back into the hobby in 2004 it was partly because I heard that Multiman Pubishing had the rights to reprint Britannia. But Brit was licensed by Avalon Hill from Gibsons (UK) (note that the AH version is copyrighted in my name, not AH's). My contract with Gibsons was that when it went out of print, rights reverted to me. I never saw Gibson's contract with AH of course, but you can't sell rights you don't have. So if Multiman had reprinted the game, they would have been in violation of contract.

    In other words, Hasbro didn't have a clue what they had, and transferred a right to MMP that they did not have.

    I wonder if something like this is happening with MoV.

  • 2011-12-19 17:28:51 | avatardragonstout

    Christian Petersen tactfully admits that they didn't try to contact Hamblen:

    "
    'why didn't FFG contact Hamblin when you decided to remake Merchants of Venus?'


    We had no reason to suspect he was not aware of our work. In hindsight, obviously we should have, but our approvals and communication was through the entity which licensed us the game and TM.

    cP
    FFG"

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