I can not believe when you rent a license for years, on numerous platforms, and you make a mistake by bringing it on a new platform the holders instantly stop the complete license.
That does not make any sense.
Is it wrong that I'm hoping for them to go under so the IP comes be up for grabs?
That's all well and good, but what about pinball fans who have neither the space nor the money for full scale pinball tables, real or simulated? Pinball Arcade has been absolutely amazing on that front, and done amazing things to preserve pinball and expose new players to the joy of pinball.
Something I've been thinking about......
OK....let's take the PS4 version of TPA as the example. All those Williams/Bally tables are embedded into the main TPA file, but were always locked behind a paywall, whether it be an individual sale or the season passes to access them, right? Anyone who bought them prior to the license expiry (as I have) will always keep them, so they must stay a part of the main TPA file, but Farsight isn't allowed to "sell" them anymore.
OK then, would Farsight get in trouble (or better yet, how much trouble would they get in) if they just let everyone have them for free now? You know, maybe like an unadvertised bonus, or maybe an "oopsie" update that "accidentally" allowed anyone with TPA installed to suddenly have access to ALL the Williams/Bally tables that Farsight isn't allowed to "sell" anymore. Would that actually breach the expired contract? They wouldn't be selling them, just allowing access to Farsight's hard work that has to be part of the main TPA file anyway.
How likely is it that Farsight will get a new license from SG, but with different terms than the previous one?
One thing we do know now is that they haven't announced a new licensee in the last 6 weeks which reduces the likelihood of that happening somewhat. The other obvious possible revenue stream for SG that doesn't currently exist but could with some effort is a coin-op virtual pinball table with only Bally & Williams tables on it. Maybe from their point of view a license that allows TPA tables to run on it with a re-designed front-end from Farsight (or less likely a different developer for just the UI part) being a condition of a new license and expressly forbidding Farsight to make other coin-ops with Bally / Williams tables makes sense; without trying it, bit of an unknown how big a market there is for it - would seem to be lower risk for operators than a handful of actual pinball machines, and likely not have potential maintenance problems associated with it.
Also, with seasons 1-7 gone for good any Bally / Williams tables would be in manufacturer packs instead of season packs so SG would be able to control the pricing on TPA somewhat.
I only discovered Pinball Arcade existed on 29th June, came up in Steam recommendations feed through random chance. I didn't buy any season packs (they had already been removed from Steam, only the in-app option available), but did
get ST:TNG as a single table purchase so at least I could have a proper go on it. Ended up with 35 tables in FX3 instead, but if the others had been available for longer would have added some of those as well.
Oh, Zen got WMS license...