Something is so fucking off about this story. I never got why everyone was speculating so much instead of looking at it like every other industry: if there's a lawsuit there was evidence of scandal. If not, it's press making a big deal about some industry practice that went awry. And then I fucking googled:
According to Danielson, Sega cannot sue Gearbox because the studio fulfilled their contract and managed to get the game shipped by the date that they agreed upon. Did the game work? Yes. Did it have multiplayer, both co-op and competitive modes? Yep. Was it released on multiple platforms with adequate parity? Yeah. So could they sue for embezzlement if they don't actually have proof the funds were used for Borderlands? Well, it seems like one of those cases that would drag on and on and ruin a lot of careers in the process.
NO MOTHERFUCKERS. See, here's the thing about the video game media that always makes me lose my shit: that makes no sense and some jackass is just talking out of his ass and being copy and pasted all over the place until it looks like a verifiable source. In no industry dealing with projects with the monetary value of a modern video game does anyone draft and/or sign a contract consisting of a series of checkboxes defining that some vague project will be delivered by some date and feature some features. You have a contract dozens, if not hundreds of pages long, probably based off an industry standard, most likely altered by a contract law lawyer or two, definining payment terms, schedules, and every little fucking thing that could possibly go wrong in order to mitigate risk for both parties. You know, so that if Gearbox delivered Aliens:CM and it was a fucking Doom 2 Mod, Sega could sue the shit out of them. Even if it was shipped by a date, in working order, had multiplayer, the included modes, and was released on multiple platforms with adequate parity.
Sega didn't write this contract on a napkin, the mechanisms to trace the funds exist and are used all the time in lawsuits (court order to open the books, follow the money, poor record keeping is admission of guilt essentially). Sure, you can still game it, but that's not the point - the point is that with modern day contract law with companies of this size and the amount of book keeping and resource management you have to do for both financing and tax reasons, you CAN trace resources very easily to some extent. At least enough to make a lawsuit viable. Unless there's some other story there....like why Sega wrote a blank cheque contract for Gearbox to sign.
I know this. Why don't these game bloggers?
Because they either don't know shit about shit or because this is just some standard industry practice that is completely acceptable to the stakeholders involved, turned out shitty this time,and the "media" is feigning indignation.
I'm going to simplify this for all these motherfuckers in the "game media": If Sega pursues legal action Gearbox is the bad guy. If Sega doesn't pursue legal action, they're all in on it to some degree. But under no circumstances would there be a situation where Sega COULDN'T pursue legal action if Gearbox misappropriated funds as people theorize. Chances are what will happen if there WAS wrong doing is the two companies will settle up without any word.
It's like they think money just gets thrown into some fucking Scrooge McDuck money bin and then people just reach in and grab hand fulls to cover their expenses and payroll. But hey, fat fucks like Jim Sterling kept themselves busy for a week pretending they were covering a real story and can now go back to playing with their full sized Halo suits that they're mostly paid in thinking that they've justified themselves to their family, friends, and employers.
