TopWare Interactive

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TopWare Interactive AG

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1995
Seat Karlsruhe
management Alexandra Constandache (CEO)
Dirk Hassinger
Number of employees 150
Branch Software development
Website www.topware.com

The TopWare Interactive AG is a German publisher and developer of computer games based in Karlsruhe .

It is the second company with this name, but it is in the tradition of Topware CD-Service AG, which was originally founded in 1995 . This became known primarily for its aggressive market and price strategies, especially in connection with the telephone directory CD D-Info . The company also published computer games . After the insolvency in 2001 was Zuxxez Entertainment AG (of English .: success = success ), which continued the games business since 2005 and gradually reactivated the name Topware again. In 2011 the company was officially renamed TopWare Interactive AG . As a manufacturer of games, the company gained not only its publishing activities, but also its own productions of the strategy game series Earth and the role-playing game series Two Worlds .

history

Early years

The original company was founded in 1995 as Topware CD-Service AG in Mannheim, managed by the three managing directors Dirk Paul Hassinger (CEO), Dirk Jantz and Siegfried Sorg. Together with companies such as tewi and Koch Media , Topware belonged to a group of software bundle providers via its Gold product line , who supply data carriers with collections of various programs at low prices and with, for example, T. of changeable quality offered. The company also launched the digital telephone directory D-Info (1994) and the satellite atlas for Germany D-Sat (1997).

Also in 1995 was the establishment of its own development studio in Krakow , Poland , TopWare Programmy Sp. Z oo. The first well-known game titles that the company sold were the games developed by the Polish subsidiaries Jack Orlando (1996) and Earth 2140 (1997) . In addition, Topware took over the distribution of titles such as Das Schwarze Auge: Schatten über Riva , Knights and Merchants or Gorky 17 , and in 1999 also the European distribution of Sir-Tech's round strategy game Jagged Alliance 2 . In addition, Topware introduced the game collection Gold Games .

In November 2000, the company won an appeal against the Dual System Deutschland (Ref .: 9 U 75/99) at the Cologne Higher Regional Court . The court dismissed the DSD's action, according to which the so-called Euroboxes are sales packaging that requires a license. Like storage boxes for parlor games, they are used permanently and thus represent durable packaging for which there is no obligation to take them back under license. However, the dispute only related to publications prior to 1998, as the packaging regulations were amended in that year. In its assessment, the OLG also followed a fundamental decision of the Federal Court of Justice from the end of 1999. The Association of Entertainment Software Germany (VUD) therefore only assessed the judgment as having "limited relevance".

Legal disputes over D-Info

The electronic telephone directory D-Info was one of the company's best-known and most profitable products . Topware was involved in a price competition and a lengthy legal battle with the long-standing monopoly Deutsche Telekom . The consequences of the D-Info disputes ultimately led to insolvency and the economic end of Topware CD-Service AG.

For the first edition D-Info 1.0 from 1995, the company had names, addresses and telephone numbers from all German telephone books scanned and electronically read out in order to sell the resulting CD-ROM for 49.90 DM. The corresponding offer from Telekom, sold by its subsidiary DeTeMedien, cost DM 1,828.50 in comparison. When it was launched in 1992, the price of the electronic telecommunications telephone directory was still DM 3950. The price pressure forced DeTeMedien to lower their price to 90 DM. At the same time, the company took legal action against Topware. The Hamburg Regional Court judged Topware's approach to be a “parasitic takeover of services” and the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court banned the further sale of D-Info 1.0 by means of an injunction , but this had no effect on units that had already been delivered. According to a report from the time, DeTeMedien was also able to prove that it had taken over some control addresses (keyword: plagiarism trap ) from its electronic inventory that were not in any phone book. All in all, Topware was able to successfully sell 800,000 copies of its telephone directory before the sales ban.

A few weeks after the verdict, D-Info 2.0 came onto the market, for which 532 Chinese data typists copied all phone book entries. Against this, DeTeMedien sued for infringement of their copyright, which Topware spokesman Carsten Borgmeier criticized with the words: “An attempt was made to raise the official telephone book to the intellectual level of a book of poetry.” The district court of Karlsruhe also had the distribution of D-Info 2.0 (Temporary injunction: Ref .: 7-0-77 / 96, March 1, 1996, main proceedings: Ref. 7-0-43 / 96, March 29, 1996), but by then Topware was already able to sell over a million copies . In turn, succeeded Topware to obtain before the Regional Court of Hamburg a ban reduced to 29.50 DM DeTeMedien CD, due to sales below cost price , resulting in a cut-throat competition have the goal. Topware also brought a third version of the phone book onto the market, in which the neighborhood of an address could be analyzed. Despite the sales ban one week after publication (LG Karlsruhe, Az .: 7 O 296/96, August 30, 1996) Topware was able to sell another 630,000 copies. In August 1996, the Tele-Info Verlag in Garbsen near Hanover, an imitator , pushed onto the market that, in addition to telephone numbers, also provided fax and special numbers, T-Online numbers for sending electronic mail and a function for number identification. Tele-Info Verlag had already entered into a legal dispute with Telekom in 1993 with a corresponding offer. In December 1996, the 6th Senate of the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court (Az .: 6 U 56/96, December 11, 1996) finally confirmed the ban on sales of D-Info because of "offensive competition". DeTeMedien is in a "competitive predicament" because the company is obliged to update the data annually. Therefore, the company alone is entitled to use all services provided.

In order to circumvent the civil court prohibition orders, the businessman friend Klaus Jürgen Steiner was commissioned by Topware to set up a front company in Kleinwalsertal, Austria . Since this had to be re-established legally independent of the German company, Steiner received several million D-Marks for this. In the middle of 1997, the sister company put the new edition D-Info 97 on the market under strict secrecy, so that an interim injunction from Telekom came too late and achieved sales of around ten million D-Marks. From the side of the authorities, there was initially no possibility of preventing this approach. However, there was a dispute between Steiner and the German Topware management when they refused to pass on all of Topware Austria's income to the German sister company. He therefore quit u. a. the bank powers of the German managing directors, the Topware Austria renamed Klicksoft Medien and claimed the brand name D-Info . Topware management countered this, among other things, with a court-ordered confiscation of the new edition D-Info 98 . This was later followed by charges of embezzlement (see below).

After the judgment of the Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe in December 1996, Topware and Tele-Info Verlag sought a fundamental judgment regarding the legality of their telephone CDs. On May 6, 1999, the 1st civil senate of the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe (Ref .: I ZR 199/96, 5/97, 210/96 and 211/96) decided that the data from the Telekom telephone directory should not be transferred without the consent of the company should. Although these are not works under copyright law, databases have been under special protection throughout the EU since January 1, 1998. This ancillary copyright extends not only to CD-ROMs, but also to conventional telephone books. However, the sale of the corresponding data CDs had already been a violation of common decency in competition before January 1, 1998, since the plaintiff, DeTeMedien, competed with its own data, which was collected at considerable expense and effort, and the good reputation of Telekom in terms of Telekom Reliability and completeness of their data collection had been exploited. DeTeMedien was therefore granted the right to compensation in the amount yet to be determined. At the same time it was stipulated that in future Telekom would have to make its data available to other companies for a fee.

Public criticism of D-Info

In addition to the question of ancillary copyright law with regard to the data, D-Info, like its competing products in Germany, was also publicly criticized for data protection issues. Among other things, the Ministry of the Interior of the state of Baden-Württemberg prohibited its police authorities from purchasing the telephone CD from Topware because, in the opinion of the Minister of the Interior Frieder Birzele and his authority, the extensive search and selection functions made it impermissible under data protection law. Among other things, the unauthorized storage and the making available of private address data on CD-ROM were criticized. In particular, the so-called reverse or inverse search , also known as telephone number identification, with the help of which a caller and his postal address could only be identified by his telephone number, the filtering for certain high-income professional groups in a certain environment, and later also the environment analysis of addresses in D- Info 3.0 met with rejection and data protection concerns. In 1995, however, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, Joachim Jacob , saw no legal action against these data collections. Topware also sparked controversy in August 1997 when the company made its phone number collection accessible over the Internet.

Later editions of the digital telephone books had to remove the inverse search due to the data protection agreement for telecommunications companies. In the following years, independent foreign providers emerged who made this function possible again in a roundabout way via an additional program. Topware brought legal action against some of these providers. An amendment to the Telecommunications Act finally legalized the reverse search on June 26, 2004, but telephone connection owners were given the right to object to the inclusion of their data.

In the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , Katrin Wilkens, in her article Rüpel out of passion, criticized the approach of Topware lawyer and supervisory board chairman Joachim Steinhöfel in 2007. By means of a legal trick - a negative declaratory action due to local lack of jurisdiction - the final ban was delayed for four weeks which Topware could sell its product unhindered. The final sales ban for Topware no longer had such serious economic effects.

Embezzlement and tax evasion lawsuits

In January 1998, Topware CD-Service AG sued Klaus Jürgen Steiner for embezzling company funds. According to the complaint, Steiner donated the money handed over for the establishment of the Austrian sister company to himself and his wife. Steiner responded with a voluntary disclosure and in return accused the German management of evading taxes. On September 30, 1998, therefore, remand custody was ordered for the chairman of the board, Dirk Hassinger. He was arrested in Frankfurt and several offices and private rooms nationwide were searched, including the office of Topware lawyer Joachim Steinhöfel. Investigators originally assumed three million DM had been evaded, later the charges increased to over seven million DM.

In the trial against Steiner for embezzlement of more than 13 million DM and the resulting economic damage of 11.3 million DM, Steiner denied the allegations in September 1999 before the 5th Commercial Criminal Chamber of the Mannheim District Court and instead made accusations against his business partners. Among other things, he was threatened several times with violence against him and his family, up to and including death. A thug has also already been hired. Hassinger denied the threats, but confessed to tax evasion in the form of kick-backs through bogus sponsorship. After a year of pre-trial detention, he was released on bail. Steiner was eventually sentenced to four years and eleven months in prison for embezzling DM three million. In a separate process in August 2003, Topware managing directors Dirk Hassinger, Dirk Jantz and Siegfried Sorg were sentenced to probation and 500 hours of social work by the Mannheim district court for tax evasion amounting to millions.

Topware bankruptcy and Zuxxez foundation

In spring 2001 TopWare had to file for bankruptcy. The reason given was the damage caused by Steiner's embezzlement, as well as the lost trial against DeTeMedien. Topware was exposed to claims for damages from the Telekom subsidiary of ten million D-Marks. Zuxxez Entertainment AG was founded by former employees under the management of Hassinger's wife Alexandra Constandache . The company was initially registered in Worms and took over part of the former workforce, numerous trademark and name rights - including the company name Topware - as well as the participation in the Polish developer studio TopWare Programmy Sp.z oo Dirk Hassinger remained part of the management team under Constandache. Instead of Topware Programmy, the labels Toontraxx (for cartoon games) and Reality Pump were introduced.

In addition to the Director's Cut by Jack Orlando in 2003, the strategy / role-playing game mix KnightShift came onto the market through the new company . The game magazine GameStar published a critical test on this in its 10/2003 issue, in which it denounced numerous program errors and gave it a gaming fun rating of 69%. Zuxxez complained that GameStar only created its test on the basis of an incomplete development version, which explains the program errors found and verifiable misrepresentations in the test. The company therefore obtained an injunction against the magazine, which prohibited the distribution of the test. The GameStar rejected this representation. These are just minor errors that have no effect on the final grade. Nevertheless, according to Topware, the publisher signed a declaration of cease and desist and undertook to print a detailed counter-statement by Zuxxez in the following issue of GameStar.

With the publication of the next in-house production, the strategy game Earth 2160 , Zuxxez became actively involved in the fight against file sharing. According to estimates, 100,000 sold units of Earth 2160 stood against six times the number of downloads and, according to Hassinger, there were already more registered online players than sold copies for the predecessor. With the help of the Swiss company Logistep, Zuxxez determined thousands of IP addresses of file sharing users and at the end of 2005 submitted 13,700 complaints to the Karlsruhe prosecutor for copyright infringement. In 2006 the publishers Koch Media , Namco Bandai and Jowood announced a similar approach in the future. Every week, Logistep created around 600 warnings in cooperation with a Karlsruhe law firm, for the processing of which the public prosecutor had to withdraw officers from the police force. The approach of Logistep and other law firms therefore also drew criticism, as it shows, for example, according to c't , "how clever lawyers are currently perverting the actually useful instrument of warning". In a judgment of December 15, 2006 (Az. 1 C 463/06) the Mannheim District Court criticized Logistep's approach as legally questionable and refused to reimburse the company for the legal fees for a large wave of warnings.

Further publications by Zuxxez in the following period were the titles Two Worlds (2007, for the first time also on Xbox 360), X-Blades (2009) and Two Worlds 2 (2010).

Renaming to Topware

In 2005, Zuxxez finally revived the TopWare brand - initially as a sales brand for sister company TopWare Interactive Inc. in North America. The name was later adopted for all of the company's publishing activities. In mid-August 2011, Zuxxez Entertainment AG officially renamed itself Topware Interactive AG. According to its own information, the company now employs around 150 people worldwide.

In September 2014, Topware Entertainment GmbH, Topware's sales company for the DACH region, filed for bankruptcy (Karlsruhe District Court, Ref .: G1 IN 772/14). No information was given about the exact reasons that led to the bankruptcy. As a result, the strenuous processes in connection with the black copies of the game Two Worlds 2 had to be suspended. On January 2, 2015 the bankruptcy proceedings were opened, on January 22, the court announced the impending mass inadequacy .

After several postponements, Topware for Windows released Raven's Cry on January 26, 2015 , an action adventure in a pirate scenario, the development of which was described as bumpy. Among other things, the development of Octane Games was transferred to Reality Pump in 2013 and the game concept was changed significantly. The average rating on Metacritic was negative. Reasons included serious technical errors and an unfinished overall impression, but the game's content also met with a positive response after several published patches were able to fix some errors. At the beginning of May 2015, reports appeared about the closure of the subsidiary Reality Pump. The representation was partially contradicted by Topware. Accordingly, only one of several Reality Pump business units has filed for bankruptcy. In November 2015, Topware released a revised new edition of Raven's Cry under the title Vendetta: Curse of Raven's Cry via the online distribution platform Steam . This was temporarily removed from the offer at the end of January without giving a reason, resulting in suspicions due to falsified user reviews. However, it is now available again.

On February 1, 2016, the Karlsruhe District Court opened insolvency proceedings over the assets of the holding, renamed Zuxxez Entertainment AG (AG Karlsruhe, AZ: G1 IN 783/15 (1)).

On March 26, 2016, Topware announced the development of Two Worlds 3. A period of around three years is planned for implementation.

In December 2017, Dirk Paul Hassinger was sentenced by the Karlsruhe District Court to a fine of 140 daily rates for various insolvency crimes and is thus once again convicted. (AG Karlsruhe, file number AZ 14 Cs 720 Js 2252/15).

Published games (selection)

Topware CD-Service AG
Zuxxez Entertainment AG
Topware Interactive AG
TopWare Interactive - AC Enterprises eK

Web links

Individual evidence

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