Marvel and NCSoft City of Heroes Lawsuit Settled

[fitbabits]

Thanks to Gamecloud (http://www.gamecloud.com) for the news (http://www.gamecloud.com/article.php?article_id=2674).

While terms of today's announced settlement were not disclosed, the press release stated it "does not reduce the players' ability to express their creativity in making and playing original and exciting characters. Therefore, no changes to City of Heroes or City of Villains character creation engine are part of the settlement.
I'd forgotten all about this! Hard to tell from this who 'won', but the fact that no changes are being made to either Heroes or Villains would indicate to me that the settlement was in favor of NCSoft.

[MajSheppard]

That doesn't mean they won. Like Sony's lawsuit, they might be able to continue using the stolen intellectual property if they pay large fees. What if Marvel is going to recieve a huge royalty that they cannot afford. Watch out for rising game fees, it may turn out the players are the losers.

[Heretic Machine]

Well, one thing that you should realize is that NCSoft is a much, much larger company than Marvel... It could eat Marvel whole.

[BleedTheFreak]

I think it's funny, if I remember right someone mentioned in this forum when was first news that it was probably because Marvel was thinking about making it's own MMO that they were pushing this issue.

And lo and behold, they *are* making an MMO! :)

[Klade]

I would think NCsoft won. Otherwise if they settled for any amount of money, the question becomes how much is the player creation system in its current state worth to the company? How much would it cost them to change it a bit? Plus the nature of CoH lends itself to fair use ideas more then copyright violations.

[Cha-Ka]

I think it's funny, if I remember right someone mentioned in this forum when was first news that it was probably because Marvel was thinking about making it's own MMO that they were pushing this issue.

And lo and behold, they *are* making an MMO! :)

/agree

The whole lawsuit was one-part protecting their intellectual property and one-part publicity stunt.

[Stryfe01]

Well, one thing that you should realize is that NCSoft is a much, much larger company than Marvel... It could eat Marvel whole.

How so ?. Currently it's revenues are larger than Marvel's but most of that goes into R&D and production. Marvel has more operating profit than they do.

[Cerebus]

The last time I heard about this case, Marvel was losing big-time. I'm of the opinion that they settled to avoid setting any sort-of legal precedent which could hurt their copyright (and other copyright holders) in the future. Though the terms of the settlement will not be disclosed, I would guess that NC-soft payed nothing and was generous in simply letting the issue go.

[Monroeski]

How so ?. Currently it's revenues are larger than Marvel's but most of that goes into R&D and production. Marvel has more operating profit than they do.

Profit doesn't mean the company is larger. As an extreme example, if Sony loses money for a few months/quarters in a row, and I have a lemonade stand that makes money consistently, that doesn't mean my stand is bigger than Sony.

[Captain Awesome]

Its like trying to sue a kid who made his own Wolverine t-shirt for himself.


Marvel is retarded.

[Lexicon]

Well, one thing that you should realize is that NCSoft is a much, much larger company than Marvel... It could eat Marvel whole.

They are actually pretty comparable in size. Gross revenues for Marvel for 3rd quarter of this year is 81,128,000 and for NCsoft for the same quarter is 84,100,000. Marvel's current market cap is 1.67B and NCsoft's is around 1.7B. Net profit for Marvel for 3rd quarter 23,392,000 for Ncsoft 19,500,000. All numbers in USD.

[DeadPixel]

I recently had a character renamed in CoV without any warning, but magically on the billing date of my account. This was after I played with that name for 3 weeks. It took me 6 days to get another name assigned after several emails to NCSoft support.

Finally, my chacter went from "generic15002" to a real name again and what do I get? ANOTHER fucking violation email telling me my costume too closely resembles copyrighted material and they will reset all of the costumes to default, giving me a free respec at the tailor. Failure to comply will result in suspesion of my account.

Is this company activly trying to lose customers? If you do not want someone to make a themed character, why give them the options? What a slap in the face.

I should have just replied, "See you in WoW, support team!"

[Rakael]

Marvel can burn in hell for all I care. This was a farce.

[One Sick, Sick Six]

I should have just replied, "See you in WoW, support team!"

why not? you can still do it as a comic relief for the actual people support, hehe