I realize I didn't post the link to the "blog" update from Wingman here...has some more details plus a plain vanilla summary of how they got there:
Well, here we are, 5 years after we initially Kickstarted Descent Underground. Thanks to all of you, we raised more than 600k, and off we went, believing that a Descent re-imagining deserved as much effort and support as possible. Clearly we would not be able to do a triple AAA game as those...
www.kickstarter.com
The interesting bit from that post is that, *if* the ruling is favorable and they can go forward, their rights to use the "Descent" trademark have run out, and they will have to re-negotiate. That may or may not be a big deal, nobody under 30 has ever heard of Descent, let alone played it.
My understanding of how they got in this situation -- and I may be wrong -- reading in-between the lines --> Wingman needed a publisher for marketing & selling the game --> this publisher, Little Orbit, sold them a story about how they could make jillions of $$$$ by putting it on the PS4, maybe Xbox too and promised Wingman more funding --> after a token amount of funding, (according to Wingman) Little Orbit started demanding all sorts of changes which started pushing up dev costs...when Wingman couldn't then do every thing the wanted, they sued to take the game & IP away from him, at which point he lawyered-up and counter-sued them.
The issue at the heart of the dispute is that while Wingman was making the game, the original Descent dev's (who didn't *own* the game or title) put out their own updated/re-imagined "new Descent" and the game (Overload) while well-received, didn't make a lot of money and so Little Orbit wanted to pivot the game, based on the fact players didn't really want a Descent-like game...something like that.
Anyway, the conclusion--> I can see why CR wants to make SC on his own, and not use a publisher or sell the IP to anybody else!
www.courtlistener.com
