I haven’t heard any rumors. George Gomez just discussed vaults on Franchi’s podcast and the discussion centered on LOTR. I think the demand for LOTR is probably greater at this point and Gomez said demand and secondary market prices are key considerations when deciding what pins to vault. I’d also say LOTR and GB probably have similar licensing challenges with them both being needed to be renewed. With that being said, you never know.

If that’s the case wouldn’t Tron be a better candidate.

Not necessarily. I think there is less demand for Tron than LOTR. I also said - With they being said, you never know...

Sure I’d bet they are dying to put more royalty money into John Trudeau’s pockets. He’s a very popular guy over there.

Yeah but you have to wonder how his rights to any royalties or other compensation may have been altered as a result of the legal mess. My guess is he was terminated “for cause” and with that termination lost all rights to any further compensation.

Can't know secondary prices without having an eye on Pinside. That's kind of interesting that Pinside has such an impact on what Stern decisions get made.

I guess if prices increase on some pins, like LoTR, they have to ask themselves why aren’t they getting a piece of that market.

some of this has already been addressed in a podcast. so here is an issue that can prevent a vault. boards. Stern has tons of current spike systems. if there are not any whitestar boards around or what ever board and it cost more than the current boards to reproduce then financially its a no go. Gomez did say that vaults can be ported over to the new spike system. That makes plenty of since. way less to produce, boards are already around. its just the porting and licensing. will they upgrade it for the better display? dont know. Will people bitch either way... yes lol

Trudeau is a boat anchor around this entire project’s neck. Nobody wants to be reminded of that.

They’re enough Ghostbusters out there don’t see why this needs a vault.

Hopefully never. Why remake the worst game ever made in the history of the known universe? If you go dumpster diving, you should be able to find a couple.

I agree. It wasn’t my question, it was the OPs.

Good point - Can't argue this.

Chances are no and unlikely ever for GB vault.

Tron and LOTR are no brainer Vault editions for Stern.

A GB Vault Edition with LCD screen and footage from the 1984 movie would be something I would buy in a heartbeat (though I’ve owned a GB LE and was pretty much fed up after a while and sold it)

A GB Vault would probably have the flipper gap decreased, I thought Dwight was fooling a comment like that a year ago, just a WAG it seemed on his part at the time.

Yeah thats the only way I'm buying a vault from Stern. After the great games with LCDs I think I'm done with the DMD era. Then again I've owned most of them and had my time. What I would love is for Stern to redo some of the classics. Quicksilver, Stargazer etc. At a decent price as well which is unlikely but who knows.

never gonna happen

....Trudeau

Hey you never know. New UV play field w lighting and a Stern issued play field fix kit.

Just curious - does anyone know for certain to begin with that the employees of Stern are compensated via a royalty structure? Or is this just speculation/assumption?

Most companies that produce technology like this would never have such a deal. Basically everyone wants a "work for hire" model and in some cases they will offer large bonuses for sales and things but would not have a contract in which future production could be held up or hindered by royalties to anyone other than the owner of the Ghostbusters IP itself.

I'm just curious if this is all speculation or if people here know for sure whether some of the "better known" game designers have negotiated extra special deals in their employment contracts.

Also - people can say "never gonna happen" all they want. Stern runs a business. If there is demand and profit to be made in another run (and if they can secure the license rights from the Ghostbusters IP owner) they will do it some day.

Anecdotally my opinion is that there are many games ahead of Ghostbusters which would have more demand for Stern... but there is a lot of insider information no one on here has. For example, if Stern has 99% of the parts needed for Ghostbusters in a warehouse it might make sense to kick off 500 machines when the assembly line is otherwise slow.

With half of Hollywood and a good many of our government and CEOs being pedos and riding the Lolita express he should be in good company.

What is a vault edition?

Yep. When they need to fill in between licensing deals with new machines anything can be redone to keep moving games.

When Stern reruns a game, for example Iron Man has a vault edition.

Terminology Stern used when they took a game that was long out of production - and did a re-run.

Stern usually has a catalog of games they can decide to run in batches... based on demand they will run games from that catalogto fill orders or fill presumed demand. But eventually a game is 'retired' and is taken out of the production catalog.

Vault is when they go back to an older game and decide to re-run it. In past examples, they have often added minor improvements/modernization as well.

Stern blurred the lines a bit recently with Star Trek.. which really wasn't that far out of production and decided to run more.

Historically, pinball designers DON"T get any royalties or residual payments. For instance, Brian Eddy talked about how he sees no money from the CGC Remakes. Now, I don't know specifically how it works at Stern, but I would highly doubt that anyone who worked on GB would see additional money for a Vault. Only the licensor would get any extra cash.

It seems unlikely to me that Gary decided to cut his designers in on cash royalties, when that hasn't been the historic precedent, and when he was the only game in town for over a decade.

I think it's very unlikely that game designers have royalty deals.

If they made enough changes to the game (lcd, flipper gap, more code updates) they could try to recredit the game design on whoever leads the revamp and further distance themselves from Trudeau. Not that I think it matters. How many Roman Polanski movies got made and won awards after 1978? People are hypocrites with this stuff. Trudeau was just one guy of many working on what turned out to be a great game. I'm not going to hate the game because he's a sleaze bag.

“I wish her well”

LMAO!!

Anybody want to tell him?

Tell me what?

They never officially stopped making Ghostbusters as far as I know. There were reports of batches rolling off the line as late as last fall.

I am too lazy to look it up, but didn't Dennis Nordman get some kind of royal royalty screwing on Woah Nellie?

They get royalties. At least the old school guys.

As with everyone, your work belongs to the company you work for, even the patents. I think Brian Eddy received a patent (owned by Williams license holder now I guess) for the ramp design on Medieval Madness.

Same for the guy that invented the catalytic converter and the guy that invented intermittent wipers, IP owned by their company. In the latter case, didn't they make a movie with Greg Kinnear starring about how his life was eaten up by pursuing lawsuits? If I remember, he won a huge settlement but thought he wasted his life in pursuit of it.

I think that's going against the consensus here.

I work for a company that makes royalty management software. I don't know anything about Stern's contracts, but I would guess they aren't doing any kind of per game royalties. For one, they're probably not a big enough company to justify the overhead of processing those kinds of royalties, or even if they are, they don't strike me as being organized enough. I also think we'd be hearing more solid production numbers for each game if royalty statements were going out to any stakeholders.

You can guess all you want. The old school guys - like JT - get royalties on games just like they did at Williams. These are not people who embrace change.

It’s pretty irrelevant anyway. People just continue to dismiss the fact that nobody at stern wants to revisit ghostbusters. Why would they want to relive the worst personnel episode in company history, when they can just move on to the next game?

I wouldn't be surprised if they have milestone incentive bonus money coming to key people after having their game sell a certain number of copies. And I would imagine that is only active while they are employed by Stern.

I distinctly remember Dwight saying he'd love to vault the game on the big code update stream last year... So there's that. Those kind of statements exist. They don't seem to be trying to throw the game under the rug to me.

If the 2021 film does well, it might incentivize Stern to consider it.

It's stupid, in my opinion. The vault moniker, I mean. Stern ran TSPP off and on from 2003 to 2010 and never called any run a vault. It was just another run of games.

I read that the new film was not good, but who knows. It has to be better than the last attempt. If the ever open theatres, though Ill be surprised.

Aw, man. It's way too early to dash my hopes like that!

IF I allow myself to start going to the movies I will see it just because it is GB. IF.

Yes, there have been rumors of vaults for both ghostbusters and tron for quite some time now, but they've never been made. The same old rumors keep circulating over the years, but they've never ended up being true. If there was already large demand for these titles years ago, and yet stern did not make them, it would lead me to believe that it is sadly going to stay that way. Don't lose hope, though. Unexpected things can happen unexpectedly.

Normally yes.

Not in this case.
The designer messed up too badly (yes - even naming him would be too respectful).

GB has a bunch of issues that need to be addressed for the vault to sell in meaningful numbers..airballs, flipper gap, linear rule set.....

The licensing will be denied from that aberrant slob being connected to that machine. They will have to revamp the machine like Deadpool.

Clearly the code was revisited and updated much more faster than Kiss if I'm not mistaken. It wasn't left out there code wise with Dwight's update.
Forget the legacy about the game. Make a new batch of Premiums with the new code, make it less aggravating to play with out of box play field fixes
and increase the fun factor!

A new batch of Premium machines was made last July for Australia...I am still trying to track down the post from last fall where someone was on a tour and saw new pros being built. Stern has never announced on social media that GB was no longer being made, like they did for Metallica and others.