Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard came to a settlement agreement this week with Trendy Entertainment, putting an end to an ugly legal battle that had been raging for months.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Wildcard co-founder Susan Stieglitz wrote on Twitter earlier this week that Trendy was looking for $US600 ($779) million. In a direct message published on Reddit, Stieglitz told a fan that they had settled for “40”.
The settlement came out of mediation on Wednesday in Gainesville, Florida, where Trendy is based. On Thursday morning, attorneys for both parties filed a mediation disposition report, writing: “A mediation conference was conducted on the 13th day of April 2016. The conference resulted in a final written settlement agreement.”
Trendy, best known for developing the game Dungeon Defenders, sued both Wildcard and designer Jeremy Stieglitz, Susan’s husband, in December for breaching contract. Stieglitz was a top creative director at Trendy before he left the company in the winter of 2014. In the suit, Trendy alleged that Stieglitz violated his non-compete agreement by poaching employees and helping start Wildcard, where they say he secretly designed Ark: Survival: Evolved. (You can read more backstory on the lawsuit in our report from last month.)
It’s unclear how this settlement will affect Ark: Survival Evolved, which has become a smash commercial hit since launching on PC and Xbox One last year. Representatives for Trendy and Wildcard did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Comments
8 responses to “Ark: Survival Evolved Developers Settle Ugly Lawsuit ”
Any company that needs to sue other developers to make money won’t be seeing any of mine again.
You’re gonna run outa software to purchase! It’s not that uncommon for companies to have clauses in employment contracts stating that they own anything you do – even stuff created in your spare time (pretty sure google have this, maybe it was apple – one large software dev). Combine that with non-disclosure and non-compete a company can lock you down good and proper. It’s an unsettling trend.
Yeah, that’s pretty much par for the course in any IT related contract, even for basic stuff like an IT help desk operator.
Yeah its real scummy, bottom line is don’t work for companies with these contracts, or make sure whatever ideas your working on are not revealed until after the contract terms!
Seems in this situation some employees just skipped over that rule and thus opened themselves up to this, its pathetic for sure but that’s the law!
You’re going to have a hard time finding any IT company that does not have that kind of clause in their contract.
US civil law is a joke… sooner they have another revolution the better
Fuckwits being fuckwits. Everyone move along.
An interesting resolution. A settlement here is effectively an admission of guilt without the legal ramifications of a court ruling. That fits with the suspicions I mentioned in the comments of the previous article that it looks like Stieglitz set Wildcard up to deliberately try to bypass his contractual obligations. This outcome somewhat reinforces my prior opinion that Stieglitz is an arsehole.