Nedan on 16/6/2015 at 02:54
As far as it not being the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, that's might be very true. But in the corporate world, that moral choice gets harder to follow as you move up. As a big company like Activision/Vivendi, the corporate heads have a duty to protect the interest of their investors. If they don't, their jobs are on the line. When you take the time to actually invest your own hard earned money into a company, you only really care about your own money & how it is used. So Activision/Vivendi didn't have a choice in the matter as they have to show to their investor's that they are protecting their investment.
So unfortunately, even if it may appear to be a dick move to little guys like you, me or DoubleFine... that is just simply business.
But for little studios like DoubleFine, they actually have more wiggle room. They don't, for the most part, have to worry about investor's & can make more decisions based on a good moral standpoint. From a corporate standpoint, it was the right decision to cut all support to Spacebase DF-9 & move on. After all, investor's interest is more important than public opinion in the long run. But DoubleFine isn't a huge corporation & public opinion for a little company can make or break it. So DoubleFine, as a small developer, does have a responsibility to their public & the public opinion.
Also, corporate companies can afford a loss on one or two games a year as they release tons of games all across the board from different developers to different platforms. So they can easily try to recover some of their loss from other projects. Smaller studios like DoubleFine don't have the luxury of accepting a loss on even one game as they don't release that many titles a year to begin with.
And when it comes to recovering an investment from a rogue developer, most corporations don't have the luxury of simply talking it out as they have a team of lawyers that are responsible for that & will often act first on the investor's behalf. Most business tactics often start with filing a lawsuit just to get their attention so that they know you mean business. Filing a counter-suit isn't all that uncommon either for smaller companies as they also need some protection.
This. Is. Normal.
Most of the time, this is what happens in the normal business world just to get a settlement as both parties involved rarely want to drag it out in court. As such is the case, both DoubleFine & Activision/Vivendi settled all matters pertaining to this out of court. And according to Bobby Kotick in that interview, they did in fact recover a small fraction of their initial investment DoubleFine.
Quote Posted by Bobby Kotick
Unbeknownst to everybody,
they didn't have the rights to sell. So all we'd said is, 'Look: If you go and do a deal with somebody else, pay back the money that was advanced to you.' That was all we were looking for.
We ultimately got a fraction of the money that had been advanced to him, and as far as I know, that was the end of it.
That quote tells me that DoubleFine didn't have any legal right to take the game to EA (at least according to Kotick's statement, so still conjecture). But instead of continuing with a full blown lawsuit over the rights to the game, Activision/Vivendi merely wanted their advancement paid back & nothing more.
Starker on 16/6/2015 at 03:58
Once more, if Activision merely wanted Vivendi's investment, why try to bankrupt DF? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the company solvent? And they tried until the very end, until the judge said he would not stop the release. The issue here is not that they tried to recoup the Vivendi investment, the issue here is that they tried to sink the project and DF along with it.
And the issue with the rights was not as clear cut as Kotick claims. If they really did have the publishing rights they would have easily won the case. Even the judge said that he might rule in favour of DF.
Here's what DF claimed in the countersuit (the sourced websites seem to sometimes give a 404 for some reason, but a refresh seems to fix that):
Quote:
(
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/32089430/ns/technology_and_science-games/)
Double Fine's countersuit seeks a judge's ruling that Activision actually terminated its agreement and that the company was free to sell it to EA.
[...]
Double Fine's lawsuit states that delays in the game's development were caused by the casting of top-notch voice talent to accompany Black's vocals, and to expand its single-player mode. Those changes were requested by Vivendi Universal Games, according to the lawsuit.
And here's what the judge said:
Quote:
(
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32239683/ns/technology_and_science-games/)
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan said during a brief hearing that his tentative ruling was to deny a motion by gaming giant Activision to delay the game's October release. He rescheduled arguments on the motion until Aug. 6 because his court calendar was full and to allow attorneys to fully argue their positions.
[...]
He told attorneys for Activision that he had several reasons why he was leaning against ordering the release of the game delayed, one of them being he wasn't sure they would win.
"I can't say there's a likelihood of success here," he said.
The judge, however, said it didn't appear that either side had an upper hand in the case.
"This is going to be a close call," Karlan said.
Nedan on 16/6/2015 at 04:42
Yeah... and he also said that it didn't appear that either side had an upper hand in the case & that it was going to be a close call. That means it would've dragged out for a long time in courts. Both sides would've lost a lot of money in legal fees & DoubleFine would've probably ended up going under as a result. And we come full circle back to my original point that this is normal corporate tactics in terms of investments & forcing your opponent to settle. Why does it seem like you have no idea how the corporate business world works?
But more to the point... all of this is still conjecture.
Starker on 16/6/2015 at 08:58
Well excuse me if I find normal corporate tactics of ruining the lives of a sizable number of people to be a bit on the side of dickish.
Edit: Actually, I've said enough on this topic. I have better things to do.
Shadowcat on 19/7/2015 at 14:23
Are you sure? Shenmue 3's own stretch goals list marks the $8.8M level as "new kickstarter record, games category".
Pyrian on 29/9/2015 at 18:21
Hmm. No campaign until $1m, no PVP until 2.5m. Not sure HBS can pull $2.5m, which is a shame.
Starker on 30/9/2015 at 10:45
Kickstarters seem to have slowed down a bit in general, but they'll probably make it to at least 2 million, as they seem to be going at a similar rate to Divinity: Original Sin 2. The quality of Dragonfall and, as I hear, Hong Kong definitely helps here. People like the perception of backing a sure thing. From now on, it all depends on what kind of coverage they can get.
