A new low in developer / publisher relations

#1 Yeah, publishers can be sneaky. My worst experience was when a publisher submitted a early beta build for Final QA testing in order to drop out of their contract at no cost. Didn't help that Sony didn't want to talk about it with us and by the time we got a response and figured what happened the company had already filed for bankruptcy and lost all its investors.

From talking to others it seems that this kind of treatmnent isn't uncommon, but the demanding all invested money is a new one!!!!!

#2 Hmmm.

Well, first off - GG is among the most upstanding and developer-friendly of the online-distributors. And the online sales group is, on the whole, much more developer-friendly than the top-tier publishers.

Anyway - yeah, this is wrong on SO MANY LEVELS.

#1 - Didn't PERCEPTION get the original rights to StarGate SG-1, and then went in search of a publisher? JoWood didn't bring the license to the table. They brought money and publishing / distribution services.

#2 - Regardless of how the contract was worded - look, JoWood either PAID for it and owns it now, or they DIDN'T pay for it and now own JACK. So right now what they are trying to do is screw a distributor into bankruptcy so they can get a license, sourcecode, and content for FREE (or for whatever they aren't able to get out of bankruptcy court). But if they want their money back, it means freaking EVERYTHING Perception created was on their own dime, and JoWood had NOTHING to do with it. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

#3 - Perception was IDIOTIC if they owned the license and they signed over their rights to it REGARDLESS of completion of the contract to the publisher. I hope they didn't.

#4 - ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS pay attention to the 'cancellation' clause of your contract. That one part has screwed over more developers than any other part. Publishers play all kinds of games with this: Say, they give you non-linear milestone payments over four quarters, at 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% at the final completion. They cancel RIGHT BEFORE your third milestone comes do. You've now done 75% of the work on the game, but you have only received 30% of the payment (which was supposed to cover your costs). Now suddenly you can't make next week's payroll, and you don't have time to shop around for a new project / publisher.

From some rumers bubbling around, the truth of the matter is that Perception was actually unhappy with the arrangement, and they were in fact looking to back out of the agreement, get a new publisher on board who was willing to fulfill their obligations and actually - you know - do some MARKETING on the game prior to its release. So this action by JoWood *MAY* just be them being vindictive. The money repayment might be a smokescreen - what they are really after is getting the license and the almost-finished game, so they can turn around to another studio, get them to finish it for a fraction of what their final milestone payments would have been with Perception, and boom.

Interesting drama unfolding.

#3 Make your game and sell it yourself or through a decent place like Garage Games. If you make enough money online publish your own retail version in stores. Forget stupid publishers and their nasty habits!

#4 Probably going to get bit for this, and I'm totally admitting on a lot of presumption on my behalf, but...

It also sounds like Perception was desperate for a publisher and bit off more than they could chew. JoWood hasn't been having a good time lately and needed a high profile title, but they needed it for this holiday season. Come Jan. 1st, the console market is going to start to shrink in reaction to the coming onslaught of the next-generation systems and without a big holiday bonus, JoWood's investment was probably going to get close to tanking them.

So yeah, JoWood probably strongarmed them into this position so that they could recoup in case it wasn't looking good for the holidays. Perception took it so they'd have a publisher with PC experience and thought they'd get it done. And didn't. Perception, after all, has no experience with PC/console titles nor did they have any prior Unreal engine experience. I don't know what was wrong that JoWood used to pull this, but I was kinda surprised that Perception got the license in the first place.

I will say that I'd rather have a good Stargate game than a suckitude one.

Course, this is an Unreal 2.5 based game. I don't really see it flying very well on the next-generation of consoles anyway, so maybe JoWood will actually try and get someone to finish it on time.

#5 Or ... I could be really, really wrong:

Ben Lenzo, CEO of Perception said, "We view it as unfortunate that JoWooD would elect to make such misleading and libelous comments to the media and the marketplace. Over the last 9 months, JoWooD has openly acknowledged being in breach of contract in a number of areas including many legal and confidentiality breaches as well as several financial defaults for work performed by Perception and accepted by JoWooD."

bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=59337

So now we have a "he said she said" situation, or maybe a "You can't fire, I quit!" ... not sure which.

#6

Quote:Sydney, Australia, 12th of August, 2005; Perception Pty Ltd would like to rectify certain statements that have been made to the press by JoWooD Productions. To be clear, Perception is the official licensee of MGM on Stargate SG-1: The Alliance. Any suggestion that JoWooD has rights to Stargate SG-1: The Alliance upon termination of the contract is incorrect and not based on commercial or legal fact.

Development on the game will continue uninterrupted at Perception's Sydney studio. Perception is committed to giving fans the best gaming experience possible.

www.perception.com.au/

#7 So basically JoWood decided the best defense was an absolutely insane smokescreen-laden offense.

#8 I'm still a bit suspect of both sides, but until Perception releases a demo (which I'm assuming they won't be able to until this is settled) I guess I should give them the benefit of the doubt and still hope the game will be good.

But JoWood claiming the Stargate license doesn't make much sense the more I think about it. I believe in general that if anything did occur to default Perception's ability to develop on the license, the license would just go back to MGM. I'm not even sure that if Perception did sign a contract saying JoWood would get what they're saying that it would even be worth the paper it's written on, unless MGM was involved at that point as well.

Which would be uncharacteristically dumb of MGM.

#9 First off: What idiot signs a contract that gives the publisher the right to all assets, sources etc AND their money back! All assets sure as they paid for the development of them but, the money they paid to develop the assets as well. There is such a thing as labour costs!

If Perception really did sign this contract, then I doubt it is enforcable in law. At the very least a judge will only award a partial refund of monies based on the subtraction of labour costs. As for what I think of Perception. Their management (presumably none of the programmers or artists had a say in the contract signed) are a bunch of absolute twats who deserve everything they get!

#10 It seems clear to me the Perception is being honest here and that JoWood is just shoveling BS. I believe Perception will release the game as planned. As far as it being low quality according to JoWood, one look at the screens should tell you that the game is well put together. Of course, I can't judge gameplay and such, but the product looks outstanding.

#11 I dunno Thomas, there have been a lot of games with decent screenshots that end up playing like drek. And it's just an opinion, but the shots look pretty average to me, with some of the outdoor scenes looking pretty good but some other models looking really kinda not.

#12 I'm super pissed about StarGate as well.... I've been dying for a good stargate game for ages.

#13 The levels and environments look pretty good and I think the models look pretty good, really would need some videos of the animations to give them a true consideration though... Will be ineteresting to see how this turns out.