According to Gamespot, Atari Is In Serious Financial Trouble.

Now as some people may already know, Atari are the current owners of the BotF licence, so question is what will happen to BotF should Atari collapse? (God forbid)

...Just imagine if Bethesda bough the licence...

you guys always seem to get it wrong, yes atari own the rights to botf, but they no longer have a licence to produce trek games. any company with the license can make a game for profit such as beteseda, however they focus primarly on the console market with regards to their licence. should they decide to create a botf 2 atari would be unable to do anything, as anyone can make a tbs game and as bethesda have the licence they could make a botf2 with no legal problams at all, just have to give it a different name to botf is all.

yep.

@moe: if they collapse and no one picks it up, it actually might be a 100% legal then to serve good old botf everywhere. though copyright lasts 75 years i think, those copyrights are always owned by the company who had it the last. if they "die", so will their copyright on botf (not botf2 or anything), am i right jig?

So the death of Atari would be a good thing in some respects. My feelings are soo confused right now.

...

Legalese hurts my brain, Jig. It's a bit worrying, considering the profession that i'm training for...

Really? What in paticular is your area of expertise?

Environmental Health - you obviously haven't ever looked at my profile, Fox.

Basically for all your Pollution, Housing, Health & Safety, Food, and Diseases woes give me a call. (Not literally, i'm still only a student! )

Glutton for punishment huh? While I am a bit of a political buff myself, there is only so much of that stuff and legalese that I can deal with...

You and me both, FoxURA. (You should have seen my old, old, avatar.)

so Matress, you're like a health inspector, driving around and inspecting restaurants?

You still have a picture of it?

Yes Nem, that's me. Free Food!

Lol na, I'd never do that. We Romulans have integrity.

Restaurant inspections, office health & safety inspections, accident investigations, planning applications...basically pretty much anything complaint or enforcement-related that the council is expected to do, I'll have at least some part to play in it. I hate the law simply because it is legalese rather than common language. I'm not against it...in general....

In general?

Hey everyone.... Can you say 'revolutionary'?

Vivre la resistance!

Hah - it would take a search of around 5 seconds to find it. It was a little too... political for me to continue having it.

exactly right mal, should atari fold and not get bought out (this would of course include all code, licences, and copyrights) then botf would be free to distribute as no one would have any legal claim on it. however the idea of atari going under with no buyer is very doubtfull, someone will no doubt buy it all for a snip.

Jig's right, I'd buy Atari if noone else did, which would never happen--their IP alone is worth a fortune, so rest assured *someone* will pick it up.

Isn't Atari owned by Alan Sugar?

Regards Wolfe

Wouldn't BOTF still be protected because of the Trek copyrights?

you're right, but every "mod" that completely removes trek would be legal to distribute then.

@jig, a buying for a snip could be prevented if the company amounts large debts which a potential buyer has to take over. It's all a question of economic value of Atari's property, can somebody still use its assets to make profit or are the company's debts and liabilities (worker's payment, pension plans, etc.) too high..

It seems like a growing number of companies are suffering financially due to things like pension plans. What I want to know is why this stuff never seemed to be so much of an issue before and if they all might be connected somehow like by bad laws and regulations.

So what sort of pension am I entitled to from BOTF2?

I wonder if things are getting better for Atari now though? I've been reading and it seems they're selling off *some* of their IP to raise money, but that money is then being invested in games to make more money. Atari aren't out of the woods, but there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel...

You get the Strobelsaurus Pension--if you work faithfully on the game, you get a reprieve from the Strobelsaurus devouring your family.

Atari is in trouble with the stock market again according to Gamespot.

Atari In Delisting Danger Once Again

their are a lot of companies that would see this a time to buy them out. Im sure Activision-blzzard, or EA would act on this, Mavybe even Sony.

I dunno. It seems like Atari has been in this position before and pulled it out alright.

seems like Fox is right: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56275

interesting what this will mean for both BotF and STO..

Yeah I read about that on Gamespot yesterday. It'll definitely be interesting to see what effect it has. I doubt there will be an effect on BOTF and reading what Atari said it might actually be a good thing for STO.