Editing Star Control (section)

=== ''The Ur-Quan Masters'' ===
{{main|The Ur-Quan Masters}}
By the early 2000s, Accolade's copyright license for ''Star Control'' expired, triggered by a contractual clause when the games were no longer generating royalties.<ref name="youtubex2">{{cite web|author=Hutchison|first=Lee|date=July 7, 2020|editor-last=Dacanay|editor-first=Sean|editor2-last=Niehaus|editor2-first=Marcus|title=Star Control Creators Paul Reiche & Fred Ford: Extended Interview|url=https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/07/an-extended-interview-with-star-control-creators-fred-ford-paul-reiche-iii/|url-status=bot: unknown|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200707194115/https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/07/an-extended-interview-with-star-control-creators-fred-ford-paul-reiche-iii/|archive-date=July 7, 2020|archive-format=Transcript|access-date=July 7, 2020|publisher=Ars Technica|quote='''Fred Ford''': ''Star Control II'', well and ''Star Control I'' have always been near and dear to our hearts. It's the first things we worked on, the first things we poured our passion in together. We have some diehard fans as a result of those two games and we wanted to service them and lay the groundwork for a return and keep the games in the fronts of their minds as much as possible so that when we were finally able to return to it we would still have a living audience. {{break}} '''Paul Reiche''': There was a confluence of events that helped this. One was Accolade stopped selling the game and we stopped earning royalties right around your 2000 and that triggered the termination of their exclusive right to sell our game. So we got our game back. What we didn't have was the name ''Star Control''. That was a trademark that the publisher owned and we negotiated back and forth with them, but ultimately we weren't able to come to terms for the name. So we decided, well we can't use that name, let's give it a new name, so we used the ''Ur-Quan Masters'' ... So the "Ur-Quan Masters" project, the open-source release of the game we created as ''Star Control II'', that really kept our game alive in the doldrums between say 2001 or 2002 and then 2011 when our games began to be sold again through Good Old Games, known as GOG, which is an electronic distributor of classic games.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=May 15, 2001|title=Interview with Fred Ford|url=http://www.classicgaming.com:80/starcontrol/history/fford4.shtml|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010515133200/http://www.classicgaming.com:80/starcontrol/history/fford4.shtml|archive-date=May 15, 2001|access-date=November 29, 2020|website=classicgaming.com|quote='''Fred Ford''': [Accolade] owe us another payment for our portion of the property. They have told us they are going to default on this payment which means we are back to owning the characters and settings. They still own the trademark/name and continue to look for someone to buy it from them.}}</ref> As the games were no longer available for sale, Reiche and Ford wanted to keep their work in the public eye, to maintain an audience for a potential sequel.<ref name="youtubex" /> Reiche and Ford still owned the copyrights in ''Star Control'' and its sequel ''Star Control II'', but they could not successfully purchase the ''Star Control'' [[trademark]] from Accolade, leading them to consider a new title for a potential follow-up.''<ref name=":15" />''<ref name="pelit2">{{cite web|author=Pelit|date=March 21, 2006|title=Star Control - Kontrollin aikakirjat|url=https://www.pelit.fi/artikkelit/star-controlbrkontrollin-aikakirjat/|access-date=August 6, 2020|publisher=[[Pelit]]}}</ref> This led them to remake ''Star Control II'' as ''[[The Ur-Quan Masters]]'',<ref name=":2">{{cite web|author=Trey Walker|date=2002-06-26|title=Star Control II remake in the works|url=https://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-control-ii-remake-in-the-works/1100-2872407/|work=GameSpot}}</ref> which they released in 2002 as a free download under an [[open source]] copyright license.<ref name="oreilly2005">{{cite web|last=Wen|first=Howard|date=11 August 2005|title=The Ur-Quan Masters|url=http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2005/08/11/ur-quan.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160316091529/http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2005/08/11/ur-quan.html|archive-date=2016-03-16|work=linuxdevcenter.com|publisher=[[O'Reilly Media]]|quote=When the original developers of ''Star Control 2'' contacted the online Star Control fan community, they presented an enticing question: if they released the source to the 3DO version of ''Star Control 2'' under GPL, would anybody be interested in porting it to modern-day computers? Michael Martin, a 26-year-old Ph.D. student at Stanford University, answered the call. After removing proprietary 3DO-specific components from the code, the developers released the source for ''Star Control 2'' to the public.}}</ref> The official free release is maintained by an active fan community.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Meer|first=Alec|date=January 7, 2013|title=Ur-Quan Masters HD: A Star Control 2 Remake|language=en|work=Rock Paper Shotgun|url=https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ur-quan-masters-hd-a-star-control-2-remake|access-date=May 18, 2021}}</ref>