Tman
5896
If this was a mistake, it would have been handled without all the drama as RSI could have done a mea culpa, pulled out their checkbook and said “let me make this right”. The fact that didn’t happen means they intentionally did what they did.
I would assume CIG is going to try to make the case that they are using Lumberyard now, which has no fees - even though it is probably demonstrable that they sort of aren’t. But if that’s the case it likely makes it even messier to untangle.
[edit] - after scanning the filing it appears that Crytek is specifically calling that out as their means of avoiding fees, and that this somehow breaches an existing contract? I don’t have time to dig too deep right now.
Lantz
5898
From the complaint, among other things, they claim that the agreement that the Crysis engine specifically would be used for the game. I obviously have no idea how that will hold up and who knows what termination clauses or something there could be, but it seems pretty likely from the filing that they have a strong case. Discovery would be amazing!
Section 2.1.2 of the GLA contained a critical promise from Defendants that they would not develop the Star Citizen video game using any other video game engines
dsmart
5899
CIG response. The standard “dindu nuffin’” kind
“We are aware of the Crytek complaint having been filed in the US District Court. CIG hasn’t used the CryEngine for quite some time since we switched to Amazon’s Lumberyard. This is a meritless lawsuit that we will defend vigorously against, including recovering from Crytek any costs incurred in this matter.”
Why can’t it just burn down? I just want it to end. It’s a fucking albatross at this point. Kill it with fire.
But it’s the albatross that lays the golden eggs! Well, for someone I’m sure.
dsmart
5902
For those who haven’t done the homework on Skadden law firm.
“Mr. Sammi, as lead trial counsel, recently obtained a $500 million jury verdict for leading video game studio clients ZeniMax Media and id Software against Facebook subsidiary Oculus VR and its executives”
Also, 3 of the 4 listed attorneys were part of the Zenimax team (Sammi, Pak, Hemr)
Brooski
5903
Skadden was the premier mergers & acquisitions law firm when I did that stuff - dunno what their contracts practice is like but I assume it’s pretty robust.
Yes, I’ve dealt with Skadden. Top notch people. If the other side has engaged Skadden they are not messing around.
Oh man. Chris Roberts cannot possibly be sleeping well these days.
Mueller’s coming for him.
oh wait
I’m torn. On the one hand my unabashed schadenfreude is happy, on the other hand, I have lingering dislike and distrust of lawyers, even though every lawyer I’ve met, outside of one particular lawsuit involving me, has been really friendly and interesting.
ZeTh1
5909
If by some miracle this game ever gets released, it will never match the highly entertaining drama of its development process. We have the Derek saga, the ‘cofounder’ wife bitching at other women in the company because they had too much screen time, a cult-like community, stakes that go into hundreds of millions, the involvement of top Hollywood actors, and now a big copyright lawsuit. The only thing this train wreck is missing is someone mysteriously dissapearing.
Amazing!
KevinC
5910
My entertainment of the drama is sobered by the amount of money people are losing over this. My sympathy is limited because they’re just damn fools at this point, but I think that is true for a lot of ponzi schemes and the like.
I’m in the chat of this stream right now along with Derek and god… the cultism is real. Their entire line of argumentation revolves around bashing him and his games… and that’s it.
Guap
5912
I think this whole thing is just an elaborate scam. I went to see if you can actually buy this thing and it will let you buy a ship and “credits”, but there is no actual game there. It said something about how you could look at ships and do some kind of arena. For $89.
Get the fuck outta here, Chris Roberts. All your Wing Commander karma is used up with this fraud.
The other thing that’s terrible is that Chris Roberts pretty much singlehandedly destroyed the idea of backing early funding/Kickstarter. His pedigree was top notch before this and no one else had the space game name recognition he had. Now if I see a famous game designer is making a new game I think “yeah, just like that Star Citizen train wreck” and pass until it’s retail and reviewed.
Pretty much if you can’t read a review of a game, don’t buy it.
It just occured to me, what’s the chance this gets used as an excuse to not show any SQ42 content on the upcoming anniversary stream? Crytek’s claim is that SQ42 was never licensed to use CryEngine (which happened the moment CIG decided to split it as a stand-alone product SKU. I can see CIG backing out of showing anything in the next few months under the cover of not being able to while responding Crytek’s claim.
The really fun thing is going to watch CIG try to explain how they cleanly broke away from CryEngine to Lumberyard. I know there are some doubts that this actually happened, but even if we assume they did indeed 100% switch to Lumberyard its’ going to be extremely hard to prove that they did a chinese wall re-implementation of all their CryEngine modifications into Lumberyard. It’s going to be really hard to prove that they did not take any CryEngine code and move it to Lumberyard, nor that they didn’t use CryEngine IP that they licensed when writing their custom code that they copy/pasted into the Lumberyard code base.
dsmart
5915
You will like my book then. It’s all in there.
