Game News Starbreeze cancel OtherSide's System Shock 3 publishing deal and demand their money back

[Curratum]

They're not letting anyone do anything, if the crooks at Otherside are to be believed, Spector and his team have been working on SS3 for close to e year now, they probably won't just scrap that and take their losses.

 

[Angthoron]

"System Shock...wait a sec...I remember..."

This. Get back Ken Levine to make SS3. 2K has the power for it. We should just clone Ken Levine so he can work on multiple games at once.

Here's my mandatory Fuck Ken Levine entry.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Tagged for future LOLZ.

Zep--

 

[taxalot]

It's always sad when people lose their jobs.

There are probably people with actual talent and skills who worked on Underworld Ascendant. And now their resume is going to be "Otherside : Underworld Ascendant" and future employers will be like "Oh.".

 

[vorvek]

To be honest, I forgot I even played Underworld Ascendant. Why would anyone want a System Shock 3 made by the same people that gave us that stillborn after a couple of years of showing how to literally make no progress from that Kickstarter pitch, is beyond me.

 

[Maculo]

Maybe somebody like Mustawd could chime in, but damn if this sentence:

Starbreeze expects to be fully reimbursed for costs the company has had in connection with development of the game.

With no actual quote from anybody from Otherside in the press release, doesn't sound vaguely like extortion. One near-bankrupt company trying to cannibalize another?

It’s entirely dependent on the agreement they signed. License agreements I’ve worked on all have “if this happens then that happens” type of clauses.

My main area of experience deals with royalty agreements, reinsurance deals and multi partnership real estate deals. There’s always CYA clauses in them. I mean even the PoE2 Fig stockholder doc is full of these “if this happens then that happens” type of stuff.

For example, the Fig Poe2 circular mentions that if revenue slows down significantly Fig can just cancel the revenue share agreement entirely. They give examples but the specific circumstances are up to them.

I’d expect something similar woth Otherside’s agreement, but it might also be the case that Otherside just simply doesn’t have the funds to dispute. And they took a best worst possible solution instead of wasting a ton of money in legal expenses.

My old company used to just pay off patent trolls unless they got especially greedy, for example. Another example was a debt deal among various private equity partnerships. Where one basically agreed to repay upfront costs if certain metrics weren’t met, bankruptcy ensued or other specific actions happened.


A lot of these decisions are “let’s minimize the damage” sort of things.

Interesting, I viewed this press release as an attempt to save face in front of creditors and sound like Starbreeze dictated the terms Otherside. Otherwise, the sale eventually would be disclosed that they sold an asset in the midst of a bankruptcy, and I imagine that has the potential to piss of investors and/or creditors. Accordingly, one might as well pretend he got the better part of the deal to a creditor. Similarly, I recall Activision is/was facing a lawsuit from an investor for transferring rights to Destiny back to Bungie.

In my view, Starbreeze took the best worst possible deal for itself and not Otherside. Otherside received the SS rights in exchange for development costs, which may not be market value. If Starbreeze was entitled to recoup costs, then I cannot imagine why it would cede the rights to Otherside, unless it desperately needed the money. Furthermore, in my experience, commercial contracts typically provide that the prevailing party can seek reimbursement for legal fees and costs from the loser in litigation.

"We sold our intellectual property to recoup just development costs, but actually we had them by the balls the entire time. See Mr. Creditor, we sure showed Otherside Entertainment...plz don't sue us" That is how I read this press release.

 

[Excommunicator]

They are in such bad luck with publishers and funding. It's like they are cursed

Curse implies it's not their own fault

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

They are in such bad luck with publishers and funding. It's like they are cursed

People keep forgeting, most of the people working at this company are fresh out of college. They were hired on the cheap by the older guys because they thought they could impart experience and nostalga through some kind of grimey neckbeard photosynthisis.

 

[Mortmal]

They are in such bad luck with publishers and funding. It's like they are cursed

People keep forgeting, most of the people working at this company are fresh out of college. They were hired on the cheap by the older guys because they thought they could impart experience and nostalga through some kind of grimey neckbeard photosynthisis.

Still i think enthusiast amateurs could have done a better job at making an underworld sucessor. Arx fatalis devs were not really experienced either back then, and this is likely to be the true ultima underworld 3 forever now.

 

[Junmarko]

They are in such bad luck with publishers and funding. It's like they are cursed

Curse implies it's not their own fault

The team clearly needs a lot of time to work on these, yet they've gone with smaller publishers that don't have the experience + funding to support them in this, so they bail. "Immersive Sims" have a chaotic history, even bigger publishers have had no clue how to manage them properly. You have successful cases like the Deus Ex series, decent funding + creative freedom, yet the end result is still never good enough to a large publisher - so further installments are watered down, or just put on ice.

I think Otherside were betting on this happening, after Ascendant was pushed out under-cooked. Looks like they are holding out for a veteran publisher with experience in backing + developing these games. Not many of those.

Spoiler

Grognard Ghost Stories Inc

 

[theSavant]

They are in such bad luck with publishers and funding. It's like they are cursed

I don't know... doesn't seem like an exception. Almost every (halfway interesting) kickstarter game project felt cursed after a while... and ended up so.

 

[Mustawd]

Interesting, I viewed this press release as an attempt to save face in front of creditors and sound like Starbreeze dictated the terms Otherside.

Yah. I was just talking about how agreements many times have these opportunities for one party to force another party to do something they likely wouldn’t wan to do.

 

[Maggot]

If Arkane made Prey with more than 4 weapons, added ammo types, and more enemy variety it would make for a good SS3.

 

[BEvers]

 

[Maculo]

Interesting, I viewed this press release as an attempt to save face in front of creditors and sound like Starbreeze dictated the terms Otherside.

Yah. I was just talking about how agreements many times have these opportunities for one party to force another party to do something they likely wouldn’t wan to do.

Definitely, got to love the strenuous contingency provisions. The language and tone of this press release just appears to be a company trying to swing its dick around after being tricked into putting icy-hot on its balls.

 

[BEvers]

 

[toro]

... Sam (Community Manager) ...

Brilliant. They can skip the KS's campaign and building the game and get straight to bankruptcy.

 

[vortex]

What is Raf Colantonio doing? SS3 could be his kind of game.

 

[toro]

What is Raf Colantonio doing? SS3 could be his kind of game.

spaghetti

 

[Space Nugget]

What is Raf Colantonio doing? SS3 could be his kind of game.

It wouldn't surprise me if he gets an "additional design by" or "design consultant" credit in the game (if it ever gets released, that is).

 

[HoboForEternity]

What is Raf Colantonio doing? SS3 could be his kind of game.

spaghetti

more like pizza

 

[rusty_shackleford]

again, devs massively overrate how much backers care about rewards
if we're giving you money that means we want the fucking game, not some stupid shirt.

 

[glass blackbird]

I do think its funny they basically admit UA was a trashfire where they promised things that aren't possible

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Oh, right. Great job polishing these demos and builds, by the way!

Somehow I missed their "mea culpa" letter in the past months.
Jesus Christ, it's downright insulting in some passages. "Yeah, yeah, we failed you, but it's mostly because you didn't get what we were actually going for."
What a load of bullshit. Your game was an unmitigated disaster that felt horrible at the most basic level merely taking control of character, few seconds into action, and making display of so much incompetence not even a complete lack of funding could plausibly justify from an alleged team of professionals.
Even amateurish unpaid modders over the years managed to release stuff that felt far more polished and complex than your work.

 

[ciox]

the game is more than halfway completed