Fresh from the news wire - Piranha Bytes, developers of the Gothic series, have announced that, as of today, they’re no longer working with JoWooD. According to the message, they’ve been negotiating since November 2006 about future products in the series and didn’t come to an agreement. That said, they also won’t be working on another patch for Gothic III.
So, Piranha Bytes are now looking for new opportunities, JoWooD still owns the Gothic brand. Somewhat unexpected but interesting development.
From what I’ve heard ‘ownership of the Gothic brand’ isn’t so clear … there is Jowood, PB and Pluto 13 all with different stuff. This is a mess, and we gamers who have hoped for the patch are the big losers.
The official Pluto 13 / Piranha Bytes homepage says the brand is theirs.
“Die Zukunft unserer Marke Gothic ist derzeit unklar.”
Word-by-word translation:
“The future of our brand Gothic is currently unclear.”
Thanks for the info Julian. I would say that at this point JoWood is one of only three software publishers that I continue to have a favorable opinion of.
This is so painful, because PB is very close to being one of the great developers of our time. But between them and that point of greatness, there is a thin transparent wall much like the one between Spock and Kirk at the end of Star Trek II.
&@#$@#(!%)!*#!
I have been waiting to play Gothic 3 because I kept expecting a long promised patch to come out. I really enjoyed the 10-15 hours I spent with it before the save corruption drove me to tears, but supposedly that’s at least fixed now so I will give it another go.
JoWooD just fired off an official message, stating that they’re currently looking for developers to work on Gothic 4 for PC and console systems, supposedly have been in talks with potential partner studios for weeks now. “High quality standards and work free of errors” apparently are a standard requirement. :)
Well, that should answer the question regarding the license.
