Quote:
Originally Posted by Kristian Joensen
I will repost something I posted over at Shacknews:
"They paid a hefty sum for a product, and Apogee/3D-Realms skipped town on them. I'd want my shit back too."
So if you where an author working on a book(a sequel), on your own time and dime. Then signed a contract with a publisher giving them exclusive rights to market and distribute your book WHEN/IF you are done writing it. BUT in this agreement you:
A) Retain all IP rights.(and all the while licensing the IP to other authors, movie studios, etc and use that as one of your main sources of funding)
B)Do NOT receive any funding.
C)Do NOT make any legal promises to finish the book at any particular date or EVEN AT ALL. Just that if/when you do they are they only ones that can distribute/sell it(Except for E-book versions, which you retain all of the rights to).
Now imagine a couple of years later, I come along and pay your publisher(not you, since it isn't yours to sell) $12 Million for the contract and a couple of years after that I sue YOU because you are taking your sweet time on the book to make it just right. Am I "well justified" in doing that keeping in mind this bit from C) above "Do NOT make any legal promises to finish the book at any particular date or EVEN AT ALL." Am I "well justified" in saying to the media that I "had an agreement with D-OveRMinD and paid $12 Million for the publishing rights"" in order to make the lawsuit look reasonable and in so doing hiding the fact that you had nothing to do with that money?
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You're absolutely right. Except in the shacknews article there was also this.
"According to the publisher, a second unspecified agreement was struck between Take-Two and 3D Realms in 2007."
So 3D Realms probably already got money from Take-two we didn't hear about to finish the game. All speculation of course, but that's probably how 3D Realms grave was dug.