Kerbal Space Program

[Giles_Habibula]

@Fozzle

My immediate response is that Take Two was being pretty shady, but that all depends on what was actually going on in that “renegotiation” thing in December. Was Star Theory asking for more money? They mentioned clarifying royalties in there… As a laymen I can’t tell if this is corporate greed, or indie greed… or just people not agreeing on timeline or what.

@AGameOfJoes

I don’t really see how Star Theory asking to clarify a few things, even if they did ask for more money, could warrant a complete revocation of contract and then poaching devs. Seems a bit extreme?

I agree with both of you. The key paragraph in that article isn’t detailed enough to draw a good conclusion:

Late last year, Take-Two agreed to extend Star Theory’s development deadline by six months to add new content to the game. That kicked off a new round of contract negotiations. All seemed well, said the people who worked on the game, until Dec. 6, when the project was pulled and the LinkedIn messages went out. At the hastily called staff meeting a few days later, the founders said in addition to sale talks, they had been trying to clarify royalty terms, which were unclear in their contract, they told employees.

If indeed the royalty terms were unclear, and the simple act of trying to clarify them caused Take Two to go nuclear, then this was completely uncalled for. And I can easily imagine a big corporation writing a contract that benefits them alone. At the same time, I cannot imagine them drawing up an unclear contract either. I don’t know what to make of this, but until more details surface, I tend to side with the little guys, who are usually unprepared to deal with a callous profit-at-any-cost corporation.