Why does this always happen in our industry?!

I'm amazed that Atari is still around.

It happens because 30 million dollars will keep a lot of Turbine employees paid... OR a lot of Atari employees paid... but they can't both have that same 30 million.

Who's right or wrong? No way to know without examining a really high stack of legalese papers... which none of us have access to. But I do guarantee you this: whether Turbine or Atari wins, two sets of lawyers get paid.

Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work.

@Derek

Atari is not the same Atari as we know before. The name Atari was bought out by Hasbro in 1998. And I believe in 2001 Infogrames bought them out, and Renamed themselves Atari Inc. I also believe they are now part own by Namco-bandai as well.

There seems to already be such a glut of these types of MMOs, I don't see how Atari's under funding theirs would impact the market all that much. Which is what they would have to prove. But I am sure that Atari is dragging it's heals on the money, because they don't have it.

I'd imagine things like this happen in our industry because it's generally younger and the whole business side is still a sort of wild west that holds no accountability. There's also huge inequalities in power between nearly every component of the industry, from retail to publisher to developer to individual worker. Everyone's trying to get work for free, and if you aren't paid it's hard to afford the legal process to get the money in the first place.

I'm sure these sorts of things aren't too uncommon in other industries, but maybe the low cost of entry into the game industry attracts a larger crowd of opportunists.