Seems like Atari have been screwing over Turbine badly the last 3 years and finally Turbine had enough. It explains why there have been so much trouble with DDO and why they had to delay the launch of DDO:Unlimited

Here is a short article

"Atari’s conduct as described herein not only constitutes a breach of its obligations
under the Agreements, but also constitutes actionable fraud. By this lawsuit, Turbine seeks to
recover in excess of $30 million in losses occasioned by Atari’s breach and wrongful conduct.
Turbine also seeks a declaration that Atari’s claim for additional royalty fees and purported
grounds for termination of the parties’ Agreements are unfounded and without basis in the
Agreements."

From the filing: http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/08/26/Atari.pdf

Its a very interesting read!

<grabs popcorn>

I hear that Atari will ask the judge to dismiss the lawsuit because turbine lost it's saving throw

I just have to say... what took them so long? Seems like they should have done this within six months after DDO launched.

Originally posted by Redline65

I just have to say... what took them so long? Seems like they should have done this within six months after DDO launched.

Because Atari is now trying to revoke the licensing for D&D.

Only Turbine and Atari could take what should have been a "slam dunk" with DDO and build the mediocre game that it is. They deserve each other.

Yummy, agreement breach drama, looks like DDO will be facing some bad weather.

Pretty shady from Atari to pull the revenue model card after it's all complete and gold, heh.

Makes me wonder where the shady stuff on CO really comes from, Atari or Cryptic.

Wow.  If turbine can prove those allegations that is not good for Atari.

If they can prove it... is $30 million too little?

Interesting about the publishing and distribution (incl marketing).  I wonder what the agreement was exactly?
In any case, looks like Atari already admitted that they had not met those obligations based on the agreement to let Turbine assume more of the responsibility there?

Actually, why isn't Turbine trying to get the rights to D&D as well as / instead of $30 million?
Can yo do that in the U.S.?  Or are they hoping for an out of court deal where Atari hand over the rights?

Originally posted by Gyrus

Wow.  If turbine can prove those allegations that is not good for Atari.

If they can prove it... is $30 million too little?

 

Interesting about the publishing and distribution (incl marketing).  I wonder what the agreement was exactly?
In any case, looks like Atari already admitted that they had not met those obligations based on the agreement to let Turbine assume more of the responsibility there?

 

Actually, why isn't Turbine trying to get the rights to D&D as well as / instead of $30 million?
Can yo do that in the U.S.?  Or are they hoping for an out of court deal where Atari hand over the rights?

Heh someone on the DDO forum posted that Atari is worth about $22 millions so maybe Turbine could take over the company if the win :p

Well, I think Atari is worth more than that - in IP property (not cash)

So, the law suit might force Atari to sell off / release the IP rights on some very important stuff which they have simply been sitting on.

That would be a good thing.

You know maybe after seeing so much "Sues" on these forums lately..I wonder if some developer will make a game.How to screw your own neighbor..

Gamasutra article on the same topic:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24997

MMO developer Turbine this week sued game publisher Atari for breach of contract, fraud, and other counts, accusing the publisher of purposely pulling back support of Turbine-operated Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach in favor of a forthcoming internally-developed D&D MMO.
 

So it's true after all.

Yeh Atari's market cap is $22.6 Million, so turbine is gonna hit them hard.

Originally posted by Czzarre

<grabs popcorn>

I hear that Atari will ask the judge to dismiss the lawsuit because turbine lost it's saving throw

LOL, perhaps this is due to Turbine being only 2HD company while Atari is a 4HD company.  Clever Czzarre, very clever.

I wonder if this will effect Champions or Star Trek??

Originally posted by Isturi

I wonder if this will effect Champions or Star Trek??

I'm going to assume that it most certainly will. Atari has a big investment in Cryptic since they acquired them in "a performance-linked deal."

Originally posted by Redline65

I just have to say... what took them so long? Seems like they should have done this within six months after DDO launched.

bingo you said exactly my thinking

Originally posted by Varsheva

Only Turbine and Atari could take what should have been a "slam dunk" with DDO and build the mediocre game that it is. They deserve each other.

true!lets do a money pot for their wedding ring(turbine&atari)

Originally posted by drbaltazar

Originally posted by Redline65

I just have to say... what took them so long? Seems like they should have done this within six months after DDO launched.

bingo you said exactly my thinking

revoking the licensing, they had no lawsuit until Atari tried to screw them over lol.

Originally posted by Gyrus

Wow.  If turbine can prove those allegations that is not good for Atari.

If they can prove it... is $30 million too little?

 

Interesting about the publishing and distribution (incl marketing).  I wonder what the agreement was exactly?
In any case, looks like Atari already admitted that they had not met those obligations based on the agreement to let Turbine assume more of the responsibility there?

 

Actually, why isn't Turbine trying to get the rights to D&D as well as / instead of $30 million?
Can yo do that in the U.S.?  Or are they hoping for an out of court deal where Atari hand over the rights?

those right are worth a lot.and what will probably happen is both company will back on the hand brake in court for decade to come and when its all finish both company wont have enough for a stick of gum at dollars store

Originally posted by TheStarheart

Originally posted by drbaltazar

Originally posted by Redline65

I just have to say... what took them so long? Seems like they should have done this within six months after DDO launched.

bingo you said exactly my thinking

 

revoking the licensing, they had no lawsuit until Atari tried to screw them over lol.

he meant turbine should have sued atari 6 month after lunch not 2 or 3 years after.

Originally posted by drbaltazar

Originally posted by TheStarheart

Originally posted by drbaltazar

Originally posted by Redline65

I just have to say... what took them so long? Seems like they should have done this within six months after DDO launched.

bingo you said exactly my thinking

 

revoking the licensing, they had no lawsuit until Atari tried to screw them over lol.

he meant turbine should have sued atari 6 month after lunch not 2 or 3 years after.

I'm aware, but if you read the article they renewed an agreement to 2016, than then "But Turbine claimed that Atari, while collecting royalty payments, enacted a termination strategy in November 2008 that would seek to end the contract between the two companies."

That's when they began setting up the lawsuit, when Atari tried to get out of the contract.

Turbine should just change the name of the game. Part of the reason it flopped is that it bore little resemblance to the actual game of D&D, instead going the action RPG route (sort of like Conan did), thus disappointing basically every D&D player to try it (or close to it), negating the whole point of the license.

(Not unlike how they took Lord of the Rings and hooked it up to a generic EQ clone which sucked all the life out of Tolkien's world. Though it's pretty to look at)

Originally posted by TheStarheart

Originally posted by drbaltazar

Originally posted by TheStarheart

Originally posted by drbaltazar

Originally posted by Redline65

I just have to say... what took them so long? Seems like they should have done this within six months after DDO launched.

bingo you said exactly my thinking

 

revoking the licensing, they had no lawsuit until Atari tried to screw them over lol.

he meant turbine should have sued atari 6 month after lunch not 2 or 3 years after.

 

I'm aware, but if you read the article they renewed an agreement to 2016, than then "But Turbine claimed that Atari, while collecting royalty payments, enacted a termination strategy in November 2008 that would seek to end the contract between the two companies."

That's when they began setting up the lawsuit, when Atari tried to get out of the contract.

I haven't read it all properly so I may make a couple of errors here (please feel free to correct if you find any)
This is what the filing says (the complaint)

1/ Turbine Developed DDO:Stormreach under license from Atari - as a part of that deal Atari was to be the Publisher and Distributer.
 

2/ As the release of DDO:Stormreach approached - Atari had not properly marketed the game and this had the potential to cost Turbine money on lost revenue.  So Turbine asked Atari if they could market the game themselves?  Atari agreed (admitting they had not done their job really) but retained the publishing and distribution rights in Europe.
-Remember - Tubine may have developed the game - but Atari have sole right to distribute under the license terms.
An amendment to those terms was agreed called Amendment Number Four.
 

3/ Atari then still failed to Distribute and Market the game properly in Europe.
The issue here is that Turbine can't make money if Atari don't sell the game.  And they won't sell the game if Atari don't get it on the shelf and allow people to buy it!
(We have seen this before by the way.  SOE did exactly the same thing with Pirates of the Burning Sea - only in that case FLS clearly didn't set any proper benchmarks so they couldn't take action?)
In addition, Atari failed to give Turbine their cut (the royalties) of the copies they did sell.  They even admitted this and a 'payment plan' was put in place which Atari defaulted on.  (Worrying for Cryptic?)
 

4/ Earlier this year, Turbine asked if maybe a new revenue model might work?  They stated moving away from a Subscription based game to a Free to Play game (with Micro Transactions?).  This 'new game' was to be called DDO: Unlimited (for short)
Turbine cannot do that without permission since it essentially will destroy sales for DDO:Stormreach.
Atari agreed, and as part of the deal and the new business model rather than Atari paying Turbine royalties - Turbine now pay Atari royalties (so the cash flow direction is reversed).
The license was extended to 2016 and as a show of good faith Turbine payed Atari some 'future royalties' (this is money that hasn't been collected yet - but they expect to collect)
This was called Ammendment Number Five.

All above board so far.  The only problem is Atari's poor performance of Marketing and Distribution...

However... while negotiating Amendment Number Five Atari was doing secret deals behind Turbine's back...
Atari was developing its own version of D&D Online.
It couldn't market this version while the Agreement with Turbine was in place.
So, it was doing an audit to attempt to find an excuse to break the deal with Turbine and cancel the license agreement!
Then Atari could have released its own version of D&D Online.
The big problem here is that Atari was still making agreements with Turbine even while they were planning to break those deals.
AND they were accepting money (future royalties) from Turbine at the same time despite the fact they knew they intended to break the deal and there would be no royalties if their plan worked.
This is Fraud territory.
If Atari never intended to continue with Turbine then they should never have even negotiated Amendment Number Five.

By negotiating Amendment Number Five, Turbine can now go to court and say “we did everything we were supposed to do – and the reason they didn't is because they intended to screw us all along!”
They can argue that this is why Atari never marketed the game – because they wanted it to fail!
That may or may not be true – but based on what Atari has done it could certainly be made to look that way?
Atari would have been far better to simply say “We will NOT support DDO:Unlimited and if DDO:Stormreach fails that is because it is a crap game which YOU (Turbine) made.”
Then waited for Turbine to admit defeat and pull out.

Had they done that Turbine would have the job of proving that Atari did not market the game properly and that the game would have sold better if Atari had marketed it better.
That might have been hard to do.
Atari could call lots of MMO CEOs who would say how hard it is to market and launch an MMO.
Atari could have claimed they were just limiting their exposure (to a failure) by not printing hundreds of thousands of boxes (which they could never sell)?

But now, Turbine can produce a semi plausible scenario showing why Atari might have wanted to screw them over.

What will be interesting is if Turbine manage to get hold of internal memos from Atari (disclosure?) – particularly if Atari is doing this sort of shady business with other 'partners' too.

A very BIG bucket of popcorn might be needed?

The entity currently known as Atari is a horrifying Frankenstein amalgamation of past-their-prime publishers and studios.

If I mention the names Infogrames or IESA, you can probably think back and recall hearing the constant near-bankruptcy news posts on the major gaming sites (despite appearances, they are really not in very much better shape today).  After closely reading some of Atari's shareholder briefings from that era, a realization came upon me.  The people at the helm there are profoundly incompetent.  I don't say that lightly.  In fact, there is no other publisher in the industry whose leaders I would really use that descriptor on.  Yes, there are other publishers which are in even more dire straits, but they at least play their weak hands as best they can.

Atari, on the other hand, keeps taking desperate stabs at the same failed strategy: a combination of hackneyed cost-cutting measures, divestment of the few remaining real assets they have (their IP's, though they have very few lucrative ones left), and acquisition of "up and coming" game studios.  If these shmoes are going to save their sinking ship, they will need to be a lot bolder than that and hope for the best.  A big bet probably won't work, but if you're at the helm of something like Atari, simply being a gambling man is the best way to go.

Anyhow, I think they've snared the lion when it comes to Turbine.  A lot of you think Turbine is a second-stringer, but it's really not smart to underestimate them.  As far as private game studios go, they're probably the one you'd least want to piss off.  They're by far the largest private game development house and can bring to bear the greatest amount of resources in a legal battle.  They also have some canny leaders.  Then again, about all Atari is good at these days is being a pack of sharks, and they will likely bite back hard before they go down.

So the weakened, pathetic Atari versus a private dev house.  I think the only thing certain on this one is that both are going to show their teeth.  This will probably get both ugly and entertaining.

Originally posted by Kurush

The entity currently known as Atari is a horrifying Frankenstein amalgamation of past-their-prime publishers and studios.

...The people at the helm there are profoundly incompetent.  I don't say that lightly.  In fact, there is no other publisher in the industry whose leaders I would really use that descriptor on.  Yes, there are other publishers which are in even more dire straits, but they at least play their weak hands as best they can.

Atari, on the other hand, keeps taking desperate stabs at the same failed strategy: a combination of hackneyed cost-cutting measures, divestment of the few remaining real assets they have (their IP's, though they have very few lucrative ones left), and acquisition of "up and coming" game studios.  ...

 

Turbine apparently feels the same.

This is one of my favorite bits from the filing:

44. Such good-faith cooperation has been met with nothing short of complete
intransigence on the part of Atari. Despite the fact that Turbine opened its books for Atari’s
auditor to examine over multiple weeks at Turbine’s offices and readily provided written
responses to an onerous number of questions-many irrelevant and exposing a stark lack of
knowledge about online games, their cost structure, and the MMO industry-raised by Atari and
its auditor, Atari continues to make threats against Turbine based on the false premise that
Turbine is withholding information and royalties. Atari has now gone so far as to premise a
“notice of breach of contract” against Turbine on this imaginary scenario.

 Heh heh.  :-D