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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shutyertrap" data-source="post: 292499" data-attributes="member: 134">I don't think that's how licensing works. Once you pay the initial fee (actors, images, IP, sounds) which indeed can be large, the renewal fee would be significantly less. Essentially you are agreeing on terms of the contract, seeing if any revenue sharing needs to be adjusted, etc. It allows both parties to make sure the initial terms are still beneficial to both, and to make sure that the company licensing from the IP holder isn't acting in bad faith or harming the brand. In FarSight's case, the loss of the Williams license (Scientific Games sought out a new partner for presumably a higher fee) means it makes no sense for them to pay or renew licenses for anything other than Doctor Who, which they can still sell with their version of the table. Were they locked into a long contract, they'd be the one's getting screwed by continuing to pay for something they could no longer even sell.And again, Zen did not do the derailing of TPA. They were actually contacted a few years prior to see if they had interest in taking over the license, but at that time Zen had other commitments. When FarSight's contract came back up, Zen was approached again, and this time they were ready for it. A while back I wrote a whole article about this, it's worth taking a look at as much of what I wrote has since been confirmed. <a href="https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/guest-post-speculation-on-what-happened-with-the-williams-bally-digital-license/" target="_blank">https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/guest-post-speculation-on-what-happened-with-the-williams-bally-digital-license/</a>I said this before, Zen is not stopping with these 18 tables. Those of us that were into Zen prior to WMS know they often went long stretches with no releases, but by the end of the year always seemed to hit a target number. Video game development comes with all sorts of hiccups, and who knows what has caused this latest. Meanwhile had FarSight kept the license, I doubt we'd have seen any more licensed tables as they simply no longer wanted to pay big money for them. That would have left making a lot of pre DMD era stuff (not a bad thing at all!) that unfortunately didn't sell as well as DMD stuff. I had heard rumor from various persons that FarSight was close to calling it a day simply because the back catalog was generating revenue continually and the new stuff wasn't really justifying the cost of recreating. 100 tables is a solid number to go out with. More to the point, they gave up on making Gottlieb machines even though what we all really wanted was the EM stuff, not the hideous Premiere tables, and they could easily have gotten the Capcom license but never seemed to really want to go there.As for why I'm so chill? No, it's not because of any beta. It's that while I'm mostly in the dark about what's to come, I know when it does I'll be excited all over again, whatever it is. Zen said this next year is going to be wild, more so than last, and that has me all kinds of bring it on. Plus all this extra time has allowed me to max out the 5 new tables in the mobile app without stressing, so I'm good to go with getting anxious once more!</blockquote>

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