Electronic Arts is a video game company known by fans for using “childish tactics” to get what they want. In many cases, EA has stifled video game design creativity just to make a quick buck. Recently, however, it seems that EA actually found itself on the favored side of an argument for once.
Brutal Legend, is a rock music related game that involves a character named Eddie Riggs’ (voiced by Jack Black) who takes a trip into hell. Eddie fends off evil demons and the like with his awesome guitar riffs. The game has garnered quite a bit of attention from both the video game industry and average game consumers.
Thanks to the spotlight, Brutal Legend has now become involved in a brutal beat-down between publishing companies.
According to a Variety report, Activision is threatening to sue EA over Brutal Legend rights.
Double Fine, the original independent developers of Brutal Legend, went through a lengthy process to sell the game to a large publishing company, which eventually became Vivendi games. Later on, Vivendi merged with Activision and then announced several titles would not continue to be supported for publication- Brutal Legend being one of them. Electronic Arts scooped up Brutal Legend once it was free because, of course, Activision announced no desire to continue work on the project and continued to allow the game developers reign as EA partners.
Activision, however, now completely feels like it owns the rights to Brutal Legend and claims the EA deal was “invalid”.
EA has answered with a simple comment, “We doubt that Activision would try to sue. That would be like a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy.”
Brutal Legend is set to release later this year. EA has announced no need for delay worries yet… “yet” being the key word in that sentence.
