Costikyan and Eric Goldberg left West End Games in January 1987, forming the short-lived Goldberg Associates. When West End Games declared bankruptcy in 1998, Costikyan and Goldberg tried to recover the rights to "Paranoia"; although West End's founder Scott Palter fought this, a judge gave the rights back to the creators in 2000. Costikyan designed the role-playing game "Violence" (1999) under the pseudonym "Designer X" for Hogshead Publishing, and made the game widely available under a Creative Commons license. Costikyan and Goldberg licensed "Paranoia" to Mongoose Publishing, which began producing new books for the game in 2004.