TurboSlug22

Of course it is - which is why im just collecting information, hearing offers and trying to get in touch with the stakeholders before any agreement is made - if I didnt do this, nobody would. I'm just gathering information at this stage. Anyway, its forbidden for anyone to try to make money off of the client because only the rights holders can do that, which brings me back to my previous point. Everything is legit here as long as the rights holders are involved. So far, BDE is involved - I just need to talk to Priitk

Its not unethical - what truly is unethical is playing a game that you love and enjoy and not passing on any support to the developers. However, that said, i dont think there's a shred of unethical operation in this arrangement, everyone involved is happy. Stakeholders get paid, retailers get paid, new users get new content Old users get noobs to shoot. Most importantly though, old users can still access the content for free. From my point of view, the consumer pays $5 for exposure to a great game. I think we're worth it. And in regards to your other comment - if not me... then who? You? Priitk? Just keep me on the right path and we'll go places. So, lets carefully think this through Comments?

I hear you about the adverse effects - I really dont think it will get to that - the worst case scenario is that the rights holders get greedy and try to stifle the free content. However, i think that since we're the ones paying to have the servers hosted, we have quite a lot of leverage in this deal too. I plan on raising this point with BDE and GamersGate - ie - there's no money involved for them if they fk with us. I think its win/win/win if everyone plays nice though and we hold the final say in what happens considering we run the servers. The benefits far, far outweigh the cost

wait... WHAT? Would you mind posting said email? Here's the email with BDE - obviously, nothing has happened yet, I'm waiting to hear back from gamersgate about the specifics of their offer and i've edited out some of the contact info: ----------------------------- _____, Following your enquiry and email (attached), we would be happy to participate in a deal, but would like to have some further details. Please advise what you have in mind. All the best _____ --Forwarded Message Attachment-- From: _________@brilliantdigital.com To: ___________@brilliantdigital.com Subject: FW: Continuum/Subspace Client Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:53:40 +1100 I seem to recall you have something to do with subspace? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: _________ ________[mailto:__________._________@airarena.net] Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 4:54 PM To: __________ __________ Subject: FW: Continuum/Subspace Client From: ______ ____________ Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 4:47 PM To: __________ __________ Subject: FW: Continuum/Subspace Client This call was for Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. From: __________ _________[mailto:____________@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 4:45 PM To: _______ __________ Subject: Continuum/Subspace Client Hi _____, Thanks very much for taking my call! As I said, I am a representative from the community of users that still makes use of the Continuum client today. As I understand, the rights to the Continuum client are held by Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. and as their subsidiary, I hope that you can get me in touch with them. Here's our situation: As the years have gone on, our community has dwindled in numbers and so, to revitalize our community, we have been considering an offer made to us by a company called GamersGate, who have agreed to host the Continuum client for download by their (substantially larger) community. This would open the flood gates, so to speak, bringing a flood of new users to our community. GamersGate would like to make the Continuum client available for download for a small fee. We would like to make an arrangement where part of the revenue from sales is retained by GamersGate and the remaining portion is passed on to the rights holder, Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. if they would agree to allow GamersGate to make the Continuum client available. We are also exploring similar arrangements with other organizations such as Steam, Impulse and Direct2Drive, all of whom offer similar services and we hope to make an arrangement where Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. receives a portion of the sales revenue if this can be made possible. Here is some additional information about the Continuum Client: http://www.subspacedownloads.com/index.php?act=what_is If you can please convey this message, I would be more than grateful! -____

I was actually in touch with a representative from BDE today we're talking about having the client made available on gamersgate - this means exposure for us and a slew of new users. For gamersgate it means they want to make the client available at a price on their website. I dont see any problem with this as long as we can continue to offer it for free. I just need to let priitk know about this

Ok looks like I need to talk to Priitk too then. Does anyone have an email address for him? And I agree - this game should be available for free - The way i see it, the cost for exposure is being passed off to the consumer by gamersgate. I dont see anything wrong with them making the client available for a price if part of that price is passed on to the rights holder and if the community continues to make the client available for free.

Problem with logic. If this were correct, then . Continuum [client] | SubSpace [client] | Discretion [client] --> SubSpace [game] = BDE Three different clients, but the same game. I threw in Discretion to enhance my point. Did you ask them if they know anything about "SubSpace"? Yes I'm in contact with a representative from BDE and yes theyre familiar with subspace. Who is the rights holder for the continuum client then?

Continuum becomes available for DL on gamersgate (like steam) for $5 - otherwise they wont do it $1 goes to the ppl who own SS to make them happy SS stays free to DL from our servers - nothing changes We get lots of new players for all our zones Sounds good. Whats the catch though? As far as I can tell, there is no catch - its win/win/win I just got an email back from BDE - theyre excited to take part in gamersgate's offer!!

Continuum becomes available for DL on gamersgate (like steam) for $5 - otherwise they wont do it $1 goes to the ppl who own SS to make them happy SS stays free to DL from our servers - nothing changes We get lots of new players for all our zones

Good input guys - I agree, if there is any way possible to have the game hosted for free to download, I'd like to explore that. I still haven't heard back from impulse, direct2drive or steam. Perhaps they will accept payment to have the file hosted for free download. So far, GamersGate has said they will host it for pay to DL... Once again, I know its illegal to do so but thats only if BDE is not included in the deal. All we need to do is convince gamersgate to give a portion of the proceeds to BDE. I'm sure they wont mind either considering that portions of their sales for every other game they host goes to the rights holders for those games. So all I need to do is get in touch with BDE and ask them if they dont mind getting some money for a game they likely dont even know they hold the rights to. Additionally, I've been provided with an email address to contact BDE with. In regards to the contention that it would be a let-down to realize that you'd paid $5 for an otherwise free game... I think thats what you get when you use gamersgate or steam. If you use steam, youre not broke so you dont mind paying $5. Also, I think meridian59 (released 1996) Was the first traditional MMO - but if SS Was the first MMO, i'd be all over that suggestion. Any other ideas? I mean, if you guys want someone to do the legwork on anything let me know...

Well I offered to personally pay them to have the continuum client made available for free on steam etc... so far gamersgate has replied and said that they will do it if they make it $5 to download instead. I hear what youre saying about people getting pissed off about paying $5 for a game... But Man, youre underselling us!! We're worth way more than $5. I mean, how many YEARS have you got out of SS for FREE? The value there far far exceeds $5 and continuum would still be available for free just like always. I dont think calling it unethical makes it unethical. I think if you paid $5 to get it off steam, first of all, its just $5 and secondly stuff is available for free and for pay all over the internet, if you found a game on steam you didnt want to pay for, you could just go get it for free anyway. The bonus here is, we get our name out there. and to address your second concern about bandwidth - if you cant afford your servers, I'll happily donate to your server fund as i've done for ours. What we're after here is population and I think there's nothing wrong with making the client available elsewhere on the terms of the people who are making it available (within reason) And in regards to your concern about copyright infringement, perhaps we can get Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc. to agree to have it hosted on steam etc if they get a cut of the sale price - in which case, everyone's happy and there's no lawsuits.

Hello everyone, Since this is my first post here, I'd just like to start out by briefly introducing myself. Most of you've likely never heard of me but I've been staff in the continuum community for many years now, in one form or another. One thing thats never changed for me after all these years is that I've always had the well-being of the community in mind; I've always wanted to keep this game fun and alive. Like the rest of you, I've noticed the population in my zone and yours decrease as time goes on... There's nothing else out there like Continuum though, so really, there should be a demographic out there that appreciate it because its unique. The game is fun but like anything else, people get bored of it and move on. Our problem is we dont get a lot of new players coming in because nobody's heard of this game. Thats not because we're not worth hearing about though, I mean, there's a lot this game offers that other new games dont even offer. When was the last time you saw a game with dozens of people playing online at once that was actually in real time? Games like WoW and the like have a commands based interface that isnt real time - your commands are dumped into a cueue and the server gets to them when it can - nothing like subspace. You can think of SS's engine as more closely related to that of a first person shooter, and you never see those games with more than 8 players really... Also, the gameplay genera is unique in SS and the skill ceiling is very very high - so we have a lot to offer, even in comparison with new games. We have a Niche market which makes word of mouth advertising less effective unfortunately so in consideration of that, I've been working on a couple projects that should help revitalize the SS community as a whole: First off is a banner ad that I'd like to get posted at some games websites... ign.com gamespot.com etc.. The banner will communicate some of the highlights i just mentioned about this game... The other idea... well... the other idea is why I'm posting here... id really like to get your input on this... I've been talking with games portals - Specifically, steam, gamersgate, direct2drive and impulse... If you dont know what these are, you should take a look. Basically its like MSN for games. They keep track of what games you own and you can download them from their servers whenever. They have free weekends for some games too. To give you an example: I bought this game called Killing Floor off of steam for $20 - its new, but it really sucks. I bought it about a month after it was released and similar to subspace, there are tonnes of servers that you can play online on, but since the game sucks, most of them were already empty by the time i bought it. One weekend, steam hosted a FREE weekend for killing floor. So say youre playing left for dead (cool game btw) and you log out and quit for the night.. steam will give you a notice saying "KILLING FLOOR, FREE ALL WEEKEND" And there's a link to download it right there. Well, needless to say, every single killing floor server was full. Hundreds of people came to play all weekend and since then, there's been a nice revitalization of population in that game (evidently people bought it) Anyway, so I thought "If the subspace client was available for free on steam... we'd have hundreds of new players in all our servers." So I sent them an email and asked them what they thought. So far, GamersGate has said they'd host the client and I'm still waiting to hear back from others but there's a catch... They want it to be available for a small price (like $5) Now before you get bent out of shape about how SS should be free and you refuse to pay for it etc... My understanding is that nothing changes as far as how things already are for us, our servers, our forums, our downloads... nothing changes SS is still free if you DL it from our servers. GamersGate would be their own entity making the client available for download at cost. And we benefit from all the players coming to our servers. We would continue to hold the rights to the game, and if at any time the deal goes sour, we can demand that they remove the client from their servers (im sure there'd be no cause for that though) That brings me back to why I'm here - Since Its my understanding that the SSC holds the rights to this game, I believe they need to give the OK For gamersgate to host our client. So my question to you is this: Do you agree that our zones are losing population? and if so, would you like to see a dramatic revitalization of your favorite zone? Also, does anyone have a contact email for the SSC admins? EDIT: Looks like a company called Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc. holds the rights to this game - they dont have any convenient contact info posted, but if necessary I'll fax them - anyone know anyone that knows anyone?