See? I make no claim to being right all the time.

@Rotbart: I'd already long since read AH's official "quitting CGL" post, and no where in there did it answer my curiosity as to the reason he chose termination instead of withdrawl or other options. I'm guessing you misunderstood my request, so no harm done, and I thank you for your attempt at being helpful.

@AH: Thank you for responding. Do I wish, as a fan/player/playtester that you had chosen to withhold instead of terminate? Absolutely. However, you make it patently obvious that this was simply the last in a long series of frustrations, and I can completely sympathize with your unwillingness to trust the company. For wherever your talents take you, I know I wish you well. Your writing and insight in SR will be missed.

That does beg another question. Say CGL gets their shit together and things miraculously recover, do a 180 and go exactly according to contracts. Would you ever consider returning (assuming they'd allow it?)

Not under Loren Coleman.

So, (gods there are a lot of ifs here), if he were removed and that situation rectified satisfactorily, if Catalyst started honoring contracts to the letter, and if they were willing to allow you back, there may be a return of Uncle AH. I'm not religious, but my fiance is. I'll get her to start praying.

Thanks for the responses, AH.

i might be coming across as even more of an ass than before, but i still say the freelancers should/could contact pegasus spiele(the german shadowrun license holder) and see about working with them. I mean, it has to be translated sooner or later anyway . .

Speaking of Pegasus, is there any official word about how this SNAFU will affect the home front? Are they sitting on a pile of half-translated books which they can no longer publish and have to write off the money put into the translation so far? And would they actually have a license to continue if CGL really goes down in flames?

I'm afraid that's information I don't have. I asked management to contact the foreign licensees promptly, and they said they planned to. Beyond that, I don't have any info.

Jason H.

I'd like to thank AH and Jason both for sticking mostly to facts and remaining generally civil in these discussion despite the situation.

I'm a fan of AH's work and personally appreciate the hours of his own time he spends making it a better game for all of us. The game existed before him. It may exist after him... but I'm grieving the day I've gotten the last product he has had a direct hand in. The fact that I have similar respect for others who have also left makes the future of Shadowrun so uncertain to me. Even if the game survives the current situation... I find myself feeling Jason and his team are really going to have to blow me away to keep me buying. Fair or not, that's how it is.

I also gotta say that Jason deserves a lot of respect, whether he has the answers we want or not, for coming into the community and doing what he can to provide us with official status wherever reasonable. I don't know (based on the vague comments from AH) if I'll appreciate the direction he takes the game, but he gets my respect for carrying the load through rough times and not shutting us out or sticking exclusively to prepared statements.


Sixth World Almanac was something that I was really anticipating. I hope I see it. I hope it's the amazing product I've been waiting for.

I would like to highlight on the point that my continual statements of butting heads with Jason in no way makes him a bad line developer. I can honestly say that as line developer, Jason has always worked continually to get the books out there. I butt heads with every line developer, and if I could just steamroll over him he wouldn't have been a good line dev. Butting heads is natural.

Verbatim from the official(yes, we germans actually have an official shadowrun board on the pegasus servers):"We don't know anything yet, but we hope this won't affect us too much"

In this same spirit, I should say that nothing that happened means that Bobby is a bad writer. I'd also attest for his knowledge of the SR universe, but I'm pretty sure there's already enough proof of that.

Jason H.

So their fate probaly is tied to that of Catalyst

Considering that for the translation of SBs they probably only make contracts with CGL and not with every single writer, I would guess that atm CGL can't give any of the withheld books to pegasus for translation. But I also think that it doesn't affect already translated books which are now withheld by CGL, like the translation of running wild which afaik is already complete (but not published yet).

See, that is the part I don't understand. In the intro to that very same post, you say:



So basically YOU of all the freelancers involved had the best reason to think that CGL WOULD pay up, since you already tried the "holding back copyright" maneuver and it worked pretty well (or okay, at least). Considering this, either (a) or (b) would have been a choice. © in my eyes is not a clean break, but rather a ... well, the solution that messes things up the worst of the three possibilities. Less knife cut, more frag grenade.

So ... Huh?

If you don't have the authors permission (called license) you can't redistribute his work nor allow other people to use and / or redistribute it. Copyright is pretty easy about that part.

If the only licence Pegasus has for the content of the SBs is from CGL (and it most likely is), and CGL doens't have permission from the authors right now… well, those translations can't be published, either.

I think that's a question of international civil law, especially wether US copyright law is applicable to this situation (that is: the translations) or not. If only German copyright law is relevant, it doesn't mean what you say is not true* (I'm everything but an expert on copyright law), but it would mean that freelancers would have to file claims in Germany and in accordance to German law to stop pegasus from publishing.

I'm not implying that pegasus is violating any laws by publishing the translated books, just pointing out that the situation between CGL and the freelancers does not necessarily have to affect the German translations.

* although afaik translations after German law constitute a completly new copyright item.

Thanks to all the funny international ancronyms concerning "Intellectual Property" carefully lobbied by the content companies, it boils down to: no permission – no cookies.

There's currently a german rapper that has to shred most of his current CDs right now because he butchered the work of a french gothic band for samples.

Even if it's another country, people do notice.

It's a derived item – the original author owns the work itself, the translator the translation. So now, you need permission from both of them.

This is actually all pretty sad. I haven't played the game for years now, but I still read and buy the books. And I've always loved AH's site. I really don't have much confidence in some random new freelancers versus the old ones, like AH. I really do hope Shadowrun gets back on it's feet and all, but I don't think it will be the same again...

Round about the time Vice was due to the printers, I withheld copyrights, Jason was pissed that I was fucking with his schedule, and after some time I received a check. Thus, when the current spate of resignations et al. came up, I was already mostly paid up (except for Vice, whose payment would have been due today, and some forthcoming books where the contract was 120 days after acceptance), whereas many others had not been paid for contracts a year or two old.

So yes, it worked that time. However, my goal in withholding copyrights at that time wasn't all about me getting paid, it was desired to be an ass-kick so that Catalyst (rumors of Loren's malfeasance had already started to spread) would get off their collective asses and make right with all the freelancers. That didn't happen.

When the resignations came and some freelancers withheld their copyrights, I hesitated. I was pretty well paid up at that point, and was in the process of writing some other stuff. Despite rampant delays on all levels (including mine), there was finally some movement on several projects and I felt that withdrawing my copyrights and stopping work would be untimely, drop-in-the-bucket, and at worst an abuse of the contracts I had signed and agreed to. I was there to write, so I intended to write.

Then I got banned from the freelancer forums.

At this point, CGL had (through Jason) made some noises about they were aware of the situation and that paying off freelancers was a priority, but as expected nobody got an e-mail saying the check is in the mail. We're talking about tens of thousands of dollars here, so while it's not unexpected that maybe CGL didn't have cash-on-hand to resolve the situation that day, somebody would find it. Of course, given the "financial mismanagement" issues, there was serious concern that CGL was insolvent and unable to pay. These concerns were heightened by suggestions of "negotiations" with the freelancers and CGL's removal of certain books from distributors. So there was some serious concern about ever getting paid.

Anyway, during a freelancer chat, Jason posted up a speculative production schedule, including several books which I knew were seriously delayed or compromised by the resignation or copyright withholding of various people. I shared these concerns privately with some of the newer freelancers, who weren't as close-knit as the "old guard" (admittedly, my language in these conversations amounted to "Jason is a dirty fucking liar blowing sunshine up your ass," I was a bit agitated by the horrible contents of the main chat), one of them shared the log with Jason, Jason moved to have me banned, I was banned.

Considering the entire reason I had stayed so far was to write and, I was being kept from doing that, my agitation over the direction of the game to which I was being barred from contributing to, and that all chances of being paid by CGL were quickly approaching zero, I considered my options. Withholding copyrights as an option was rapidly losing its appeal, because there was little chance of being paid under present circumstances. I had no desire to continue dealing with Jason as line developer on a professional level after our last dispute, and a similar desire to get away from Catalyst and what I perceived as their acceptance of long-term theft to the direct detriment of everyone involved with the company.

I did consider the impact on the books and the fans, but I was betting that Catalyst will fold before it pays off the freelancers and launches one of the books-under-question. I may be wrong. In preparation for which, Jason is no doubt busily re-writing my sections on all the books I had chapters in.

Now you, Raben, you love the game, I know. It shows in your work. The difference between us is I have no faith in Catalyst or the people that represent it. Jason, Ghost love him, has become a mouthpiece for Randall Bills, who doesn't love anything that doesn't have giant robots in it. I can say that because I had to work with Randall during the between-developers-time, and it wasn't fucking pretty. Randall will probably back Loren until the company burns down around them, and Jason will be content spouting whatever Randall tells him. That was my chain-of-command, that's what I was dealing with: a thief (Coleman), his best friend that will always back him up (Bills), and a line developer that's willing to toe the company line (Hardy). I couldn't trust those people, and I don't think you should either - but that's just me. You have to make your own decision about how honest the company is being with you, what your relationship is to those people.

Thx for the answer. It's a little hard for me to wade through the crap, so to speak. On one level I hear explanations why this and that happened, and feel sorry that things turned out that by "just because of some little misunderstandings" (i.e. I can imagine Jason being pissed because of the chat transcript, and you because of being banned, and of course the solution would be for me to yell "Get your act together and play nivcely, kids" but obviously this is just the surface).

The simple truth is I have a snowballs chance in Hell to get to the Truth Of Things™. I don't have any reason to mistrust you, Bobby, but also I don't have any reason to not trust CGL, Randall, or Jason. Heck, I am not even unpaid, as my first CGL payment EVER is not even due (OK, 10 Jackpointers could be paid about now, but under normal circumstances I would have waited until CorpGuide payment to address it, if it still would have remained unpaid). Whew. I hope somewhere within those words was a sentence that made sense.

My personal politics are rather simple: Don't fuck me over, and I won't fuck you over. CGL and the people working for it, esp. Jason Hardy, Brent Evans and Stephen McQuillan have been nothing but nice to me. So...

Like I said somewhere else: If this turns out to be my FASA experience, so be it. I think the least CGL deserves is to try and clean up their mess. And if withholding copyrights or canceling contracts has any effect on Pegasus (which I work for, too, and with payment on time) I think "Aw fuck, it's not their fault, leave them out of this mess and give at least THEM the permission tp proceed"

Come to think of it: Would that be possible? Denying CGL the rights, but giving them to Pegasus/to the translated version only? Hmmmm....

Yep, see the fan translations for Harry Potter books for an example.

If the contract with CGL for the material is exclusive (which, most likely, it is) – nope. And a silent agreement not to sue is not exactly the "security" I would like to have…