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Rune 2 lawsuit now going after Bethesda and ZeniMax tooAllegations the release “was maliciously torpedoed in a conspiracy”
Allegations the release “was maliciously torpedoed in a conspiracy”
Rune 2publishers Ragnarok Game were already suing the legal remnants of Human Head and several key figures there. Now they’ve expanded it to also pursue Bethesda Softworks and their parent company, ZeniMax Media, saying the release “was maliciously torpedoed in a conspiracy between the game’s developer, desperate for cash, and a large video game conglomerate intent on destroying threats to its own video-game franchises.”
Ragnarok do make the bold claim that Bethesda saw Rune 2 as a threat to their own Viking ‘em up,Skyrim. That is, at best, daft. No offence to Human Head, but in no world was Rune 2 a substantial threat toSkyrim. But there’s plenty more the publishers are upset about.
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They also claim that in the days before Rune 2 launched, ZeniMax had told employees to stop working on it - at a time when they likely would’ve been working on last-minute bug fixes. They say ZeniMax instructed people to not be involved with prescheduled marketing plans either. Ragnarok Game claim they were now dealing with ZeniMax employees and didn’t even know it. They also take issue with the game’s source remaining on computers that then became Bethesda property, and say they refused to hand over the assets. Moreover, they say that the assets eventually received were “incomplete and unusable”.
Basically, Ragnarok Game allege that Bethesda and Human Head hid the fact that they were planning to buddy up, gave no indication that the game would lose its developers days before launch, and generally acted together to “sabotage” the release. There’s more nuance to it, of course, and you can read that inthe full complaintif you’re curious.
The suit seeks at least $100 million (£75m) in damages for breach of contract, fraudulent concealment, negligent misrepresentation, tortious interference, and other dramatic legal terms. Much of this applies to a game based on the comic book Oblivion Song too, which Human Head had been making for co-plaintiffs ESDFOS.
After one year exclusive tothe Epic Games Store, Rune 2 is due to launchon Steamon November 13th in its updated ‘Decapitation Edition’ form. The Steam store blurb goes hard:
Well! Someone had a lot of fun writing that.
