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View Full Version : Game Studios Enter Legal Battle Over The Making Of Ark: Survival Evolved



InsaneJ
24th March 2016, 16:49
Who really designed Ark: Survival Evolved? A lawsuit, filed late last year, alleges that there’s a messy story behind the development of one of Steam’s biggest hits.
The players involved are Trendy Entertainment, the company behind Dungeon Defenders, and Studio Wildcard, the start-up game dev behind Ark, which launched in Early Access last year on both Steam and Xbox One. In a lawsuit filed against Wildcard in December of 2015, Trendy alleges that their former creative director, game designer Jeremy Stieglitz, breached his contract and has been secretly working on Ark since he resigned from his position in 2014.

Read the full article on Kotaku:
http://kotaku.com/game-studios-enter-legal-battle-over-the-making-of-ark-1766689744

Sounds a little like a disgruntled ex-employer who doesn't like his former employee to work at other game studios. This is why non-compete closures in work contracts suck. If your profession is A, then you should never sign a contract stating that you can not perform A for x amount of time after you leave the company. That's just stupid and something that should be made illegal in quick. Not taking secrets from one company to another, sure. Not being allowed to work at another company, ludicrous.

Let's just hope this doesn't negatively affect Studio Wildcard and thus ARK.

Jiro_89
24th March 2016, 19:55
I had to sign one of those when I took my first job out of HighScool working at Nike. It basically said if you get any ideas they belong to us, you can't get any new ideas when you quit, and you can't work anywhere else with shoes for 6 months. Didn't last long there, felt like I sold my soul.