Creators of Star Control Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III have made a statement claiming they are in "legal conflict" with Stardock, accusing the game and software development company of publishing their earlier games without permission.
Stardock acquired Atari's rights for the Star Control IP at a bankruptcy auction back in 2013, although Ford and Reiche say that "Atari’s rights to publish our earlier games terminated over a decade before the auction and we contend that Stardock has zero rights to our games, including any code and other IP we created."
President and CEO of Stardock Brad Wardell responded to the duo's claim, saying "for the entirety of the time we have held the rights, they have been getting paid for those sales. If they had an objection to the games being sold this is something that could and should have been addressed before we were ever involved."
The post by Wardell goes on to state that "many assets were transferred to us including the various publishing agreements to the Star Control franchise. The short version is that the classic IP is messy."
In response to the accusations, digital distributor GOG.com has announced that it will remove Star Control 1, 2, and 3 from its storefront on Tuesday, December 5th.