We got initially, really strong reviews about the game, saying that this is kind of a cool indie game. "We launched the game ourselves, we had a great day on November 12. "We did a ton of great work, set up a lot of interviews and a lot of streams, spent a lot of money, and they never showed up," Candler said. The developer agreed to support the game post-launch while Ragnarok worked out a longer-term plan, but Candler said Human Head ghosted them on that, too. It refused to say why it was closing so suddenly, Rune 2 executive producer Matt Candler said, and did not allow the publisher to attempt to hire any of its employees as contractors. Human Head told Ragnarok that it was shutting down on November 7, less than a week before Rune 2 was set to go live. "Show up for no marketing, don't support streamers, make an announcement the day after the game launched that you're no longer going to work on it and you've joined some competitive company-I mean, what more could they do?" this is probably the playbook on how to do it," Ragnarok general counsel Sam Goldberg told me. Raganarok is seeking damages of no less than $100 million.Ī Bethesda representative declined to comment for ."If you want to tank a game. While Rune 2 is live and Ragnarok has formed a new studio to continue work on the game, the publisher said that Oblivion Song is "in such a state of disrepair that it has to be abandoned." "ZeniMax and Bethesda knowingly and intentionally caused Human Head to breach its obligations with respect to Oblivion Song and Rune 2, and at the active instructions of ZeniMax, Human Head timed the unveiling of its plan to cause maximum damage," Ragnarok alleges in the suit. It goes on to allege that ZeniMax then ordered its new Roundhouse employees to stop working on those two games and "to ensure maximum damage to Rune 2 and protect its Skyrim franchise," sent Rune 2 lead developer Christopher Rhinehart on a business trip to ensure he would be unavailable for Rune 2's launch. Indeed, it appears as if Defendants with malicious intent deliberately organized the assets in such a way as to ensure they were as indecipherable and unusable as possible." While the suit acknowledges Ragnarok eventually received source code early this year, "the assets that ultimately were transferred were incomplete and unusable. The suit also accuses the defendants of "maliciously holding the hostage for months," preventing Ragnarok from working on the game and supporting it after launch. The suit notes that the equipment would have contained Ragnarok-owned trade secrets, specifically source code and materials for the two games it had contracted Human Head to make: Rune 2 and Oblivion Song, a game based on the comic series written by The Walking Dead co-creator Robert Kirkman. Ragnarok said ZeniMax formed the Roundhouse subsidiary two weeks before Rune 2's launch and quietly acquired the studio's equipment and took over its leases. This enabled Bethesda and ZeniMax to see for themselves the threat that Rune 2 posed to their hit franchise, Skyrim/Elder Scrolls." "In an act of utter bad faith and contractual breach of confidentiality requirements, Human Head secretly provided Bethesda and ZeniMax with 'keys' that permitted it to play a confidential, pre-release version of Rune 2. The suit does not name ZeniMax parent Microsoft, which only acquired the Elder Scrolls company last month. Ragnarok expanded the suit yesterday to include ZeniMax and Bethesda, saying it had conspired with Human Head starting late last summer. The studio reformed within days as Roundhouse, a new Bethesda-owned studio comprised of Human Head developers. The suit was originally filed last year against Human Head and three of its co-founders for fraud and breach of contract after the studio shut down a day after the launch of Rune 2, a game it had developed for Ragnarok. Rune 2 publisher Ragnarok has added ZeniMax Media, Bethesda Softworks, and Roundhouse Studios to its lawsuit against key former Human Head employees, accusing them of intentionally sabotaging a pair of games they had contracted Human Head to develop.
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