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Read the fine print: Ubisoft free game offer waives lawsuits
Ubisoft's offer of a free game to make up for the widespread technological problems of Assassin's Creed: Unity seems generous, but those hoping to take advantage should be aware of a notable caveat tucked inside the offer's fine print. You'll find the entirety of the relevant legalese beyond the break, but in short it states that by downloading the free game, players are waiving the right to sue Ubisoft or any of its development studios over the state of Assassin's Creed: Unity. This precludes players from suing Ubisoft directly, as well as joining any class-action lawsuits against the publisher.
Activision-Blizzard split from Vivendi halted
As reported in July, Activision-Blizzard made the move to separate itself from majority shareholder Vivendi Universal by buying itself back to the tune of over 8 billion dollars in total. About a week after the announcement, shareholder Todd Miller filed a complaint against Activision-Blizzard for doing so. Earlier this month, shareholder Douglas Hayes instigated a lawsuit against Activision-Blizzard to stop the sale, alleging that the company's CEO, chairman, and a handful of investors will benefit disproportionately from the sale. As a result, the deal is now halted for the time being. The lawsuit hinges around the fact that the Activision-Blizzard buyback from Vivendi is actually a two-part share acquisition. The first part involves Activision-Blizzard, as a company, purchasing around 429 million shares from Vivendi. The second part -- which was the subject of Todd Miller's complaint and is at the center of the lawsuit -- involves the private investment vehicle ASAC II LP, headed by Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and Co-Chairmain Brian Kelly, concurrently purchasing around 172 million shares from Vivendi. Hayes v. Activision-Blizzard alleges that the approval of the second sale represents a "breach of of [Activision-Blizzard and Vivendi's] fiduciary duties" and violates "certain provisions of the Company's certificate of incorporation" because it failed to submit the sale's approval to a non-Vivendi stockholder vote. For its part, Activision-Blizzard seems to view the halt as merely a setback, and intends to continue forward with the buyback. As per the following statement Activision-Blizzard "remains committed to the transaction and is exploring the steps it will take to complete the transaction as expeditiously as possible."
Bethesda fails to block Fallout MMO progress, again
The latest development in the ongoing lover's quarrel for control of the Fallout MMO seems to be something of a body blow for Bethesda. The famed Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3 RPG maker was smacked down in a U.S. District Court this week as a judge ruled that the company "unreasonably delayed in seeking relief, and that the emergency that allegedly justifies a TRO is self-created." TRO stands for temporary restraining order, and Bethesda was seeking such against Interplay and Masthead Studios, which are developing the long-awaited Fallout MMORPG. This isn't the first time that Bethesda has turned to the legal system as a way of preserving its Fallout brand. It's also not the first time the company has been denied, as a 2009 ruling allowed Interplay to continue working on the massively multiplayer version of Fallout despite Bethesda's objections.
EVE Evolved: Third-party development
When EVE Online was first released in 2003, it was a primitive beast from a small indie studio operating out of a tiny office in Reykjavik, Iceland. Although EVE has been expanded over the years, not all of that development has come from creator CCP Games. EVE players routinely step in to fill gaps in the game's functionality through the development of third-party applications, websites and tools. Early apps like the EVEMon skill planner were very limited in what information they could access about a player's character, but with the introduction of the EVE API system, a huge wealth of information became available. Since then, we've seen a resurgence of third-party app and tool development, producing impressive apps like Capsuleer and Aura for the iPhone. We've also seen some incredibly useful websites like the ICSC jump planner suite, gambling site SOMER.blink and the Dotlan EVE maps with regularly updating statistics. Most app developers work on the projects in their spare time, and until now they've relied on donations or advertising revenue to keep up with server costs or keep development worth the time invested. As EVE is CCP's intellectual property, it's illegal for anyone to make money from it without the company's permission. This week, CCP released the first draft of a contract that would allow developers to monetise their apps, but the proposal was not received well by the EVE community. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at third-party app development and what's wrong with the proposed deal.
