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GOG.com launches portal for indie developers
GOG.com, a platform for both new and classic downloadable games, recently launched an indie portal as part of its services. The portal offers indie developers a clear method of submitting their games to the platform, which already features popular games like FTL, Fez and Hotline Miami. GOG.com is also offering indie developers an advanced royalties option when launching games on its site. Instead of the standard 70/30 royalties split, the site would pay out an advance on a developer's royalties before entering a 60/40 split agreement, which would be in effect until the advanced payment is recouped by the game's sales.
Jury finds Antonick's claim against EA has not expired in case for Madden royalties
A California jury determined that the statute of limitations in the lawsuit filed by original Madden series creator Robin Antonick against Electronic Arts has not run out, according to a press release from Antonick's legal representatives. As a result, Antonick has been deemed eligible for unpaid royalties, as well as "punitive damages and disgorgement of all profits arising from the $5 billion Madden NFL franchise and related sports videogames" released between 1990 and 1996. "Damages relating to 1997-2013 games" will be tried at a later date. Originally filed in 2011, the suit claimed that EA breached a development contract signed by Antonick in 1986 that entitled him to royalties on derivative versions of the game. A federal judge then denied EA's motion for dismissal in April 2013. Games in the series leading up to Madden NFL 97 in 1996 were handled by external development studios such as Visual Concepts and Bethesda. Madden 97 was the first game developed by now-internal studio EA Tiburon, and also the first game created for PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The jury determined that Antonick "did not suspect any wrongdoing by EA before 2005. It also found that a reasonable person would not have known about the claims before 2005," when determining that the statute of limitations on the case did not run out. The jury will now decide what to award Antonick in unpaid royalties and profits from the games launched between 1990 and 1996. We've reached out to both EA and Antonick's legal team for statement, and will update accordingly.
ZTE licenses Microsoft's Android-related patents
Just last week Microsoft added Foxconn's parent company to its growing list of licensees for patents it asserts are key to Android, and now ZTE has inked a deal with Ballmer and Co. as well. Now that the pact is in place, Microsoft says it's struck patent accords with roughly 20 hardware makers, and that 60 percent of phones sold with Google's open source OS are covered by such licenses. With HTC and LG already paying Redmond royalties for devices using Android, that leaves the likes of Google, Motorola and Huawei as the odd manufacturers out. If Motorola has its way, however, that won't change.
Adobe charging 10 percent royalty on iOS games made with Director 12
Adobe recently released version 12 of Director, its interactive app creation system, and in doing so introduced the ability for those who use the app to create iOS games to publish their titles directly to the App Store. As it turns out, that potentially time-saving capability comes at a premium. 9to5Mac reports that Adobe is asking for a 10% cut of all profits for games created in Director 12 -- if they make more than US$20,000 in the App Store. Director users on Adobe's forums are upset by the move, which is outlined in the application's new terms and conditions. Evidently, it's up to app authors to inform Adobe of any sales beyond the initial $20,000 mark and pay the company directly. This differs from other development products such as Unity, which charge app makers up-front or on a per-title basis in order to utilize their software to make commercial products. In this case, there's a $999 initial cost for Director plus a royalty, which seems to be a little more than these devs are willing to pay.
Nokia is hooked on Windows Phone, now has to pay for it
When Microsoft and Nokia married at the temple of Windows Phone last year, the dowry was nothing if not complicated. Nokia had to pay a minimum amount in software royalties to Microsoft each quarter, regardless of how many Lumia smartphones it sold, but the financial hit was more than cancelled out by Microsoft's "platform support payments" coming back the other way. At some point, however, the net flow of cash was always bound to switch direction, as the cost of the software royalties grew to exceed Redmond's $250 million quarterly support payments, effectively bringing the whole thing closer to being a zero-sum transaction. According to Nokia's latest financial report, that turning point has now been reached and the company's accountants will have to start writing a minus where there used to be a plus. The extra expense makes it doubly fortunate that Nokia has just returned to profitability -- at least if future quarters prove it really has.
Audience Inc says Apple unlikely to use its audio tech in iPhones
Audience is a US-based company that makes voice and audio processors for mobile products. In the past, Apple used Audience's audio technology in the iPhone, but that may change with the next iPhone model, says a report in Reuters. Audience's CEO Peter Santos told Reuters in an email interview that, "Events of the last week in the normal course of business led us to believe that our technology is not likely to be enabled in Apple's next generation mobile phone." This admission sent Audience's stock tumbling down 60 percent as more than one-third of Audience's total revenue comes from licensing agreements with Apple. The company will still get royalties on older phone models, but that revenue will slowly dry up as Apple phases out the iPhone 4 and 4S. Audience didn't say why Apple is no longer using its processors, but the company did hint that Apple is now using its own team to develop audio technology for the iPhone.
German government proposes to charge search engines for excerpting news sites
A German government committee is proposing changes that could force search engines operating in the country to pay for using news excerpts. The plans involve setting up a department to charge royalties from sites that aggregate news feeds, and covers them for 12-months from date of publish. This isn't the first country to attempt to protect publishers' material, with the Newspaper Licensing Agency in the UK also performing a similar role. Before you hide your news blog from German eyes, the ruling will only affect commercial outfits.Germany's publishing executives have been pushing for such a move since a case in Belgium that saw Google News forced to stop excerpting articles. Unsurprisingly there is strong support from the industry, with 149 execs from the country already having petitioned the government with a "Hamburg Declaration on Intellectual Property Rights" proposal in 2009, and both the German Federation of Newspaper Publishers and Association of German Magazine Publishers also campaigning for change. Now that the committee has laid down clear plans, it remains to be seen if or how they will be implemented, but with the nation's track record for pulling no punches where technology is concerned, search engines might have to prepare for a rapid change in policy.
Sanjay Jha hints at Motorola's plans to collect patent royalties from Android competitors
If you haven't noticed, the mobile patent wars have been heating up lately, and Motorola hasn't exactly been sitting quietly on the sidelines. In the past year, the company's been in the courtroom with a number of major players, including Apple and Microsoft, and now the outfit seems poised to go after other Android handset makers. According to Unwired View, during a keynote speech at the Oppenheimer Technology and Communications conference, CEO Sanjay Jha signaled that Motorola could soon go on the offensive when it comes to the competition: I would bring up IP as a very important for differentiation (among Android vendors). We have a very large IP portfolio, and I think in the long term, as things settle down, you will see a meaningful difference in positions of many different Android players. Both, in terms of avoidance of royalties, as well as potentially being able to collect royalties. And that will make a big difference to people who have very strong IP positions. If Motorola does indeed intend to differentiate itself from its competitors by clutching tightly to its patent portfolio, could we soon see a replay of Microsoft's recent royalty collection binge? We'll just have to wait and see.
Microsoft and Wistron come to terms in royalty agreement, Android and Chrome OS now targeted
We're seeing a heavy surge in Microsoft's relentless pursuit of licensing deals in light of recent patent-infringement claims. Wistron Corp, a spinoff of Acer, is the latest company to make an agreement with Microsoft in a string of lawsuits and royalty clashes that's spanned the course of two months. While we've seen Android suppliers such as Itronix and Velocity Micro come to agreements with the folks in Redmond, as well as others like Motorola and Barnes & Noble becoming courtroom fodder, this is the first time Chrome OS has been targeted. Wistron's an ODM (original design manufacturer) that supplies other companies with computers, tablets and e-readers using either Google OS, so it's not necessarily a surprise that it signed up for the Microsoft lawsuit prevention plan. Scant details are available aside from the fact that royalties will be collected as a result. Now that Chrome is involved, it not only shows that Team Ballmer isn't backing down, it appears to have even more companies in its crosshairs -- we just wonder who's next on the list. Full (albeit brief) PR after the break.
Apple and Nokia patent dispute ends with license agreement, Apple payments
It's over. The patent battle between Nokia and Apple just ended not with an injunction, but with a press release citing a license agreement and payments from Apple to Espoo. The specifics of the agreement are confidential, but Nokia does say that Apple will make a one-time payment followed by on-going royalties. So, while Nokia may be having trouble selling its zombied handsets, at least its IP portfolio can help fill the coffers during the transition to Windows Phone. Read the full press release after the break.
Boom! Original John Madden Football designer files lawsuit against EA
No, John Madden isn't the person who designed John Madden Football. That credit goes to a man named Robin Antonick, who created the first game in the megahit sports series (and its little-known spinoff, Tough-Actin' Tinaction) for C64, Apple 2, and MS-DOS back in 1988. Twenty-three years later, the series is a multi-multi-million-selling institution, and he's seeking some of the revenue from it in addition to the credit. Antonick has filed suit against Electronic Arts, seeking (as Reuters puts it) "tens of millions" in royalties, plus a portion of the enormous profits EA has made on the series. "According to recent statements by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins," Antonick's complaint reads, "the current generation of software apparently derived from software developed by Antonick." And though "he was responsible for the development of virtually all of the ground-breaking technology at the heart of the game," Electronic Arts has not issued a royalty payment to Antonick since 1992, according to the claim -- though it has tried to settle in the past. [Image: Retro Games DB]
Epic to show new Unreal Engine 3 updates at GDC, raises UDK royalty-free threshold to $50K
Next week, Epic Games will once again premiere the latest build of Unreal Engine 3 at GDC, a showing-off that's become pretty much tradition for the North Carolina-based studio. In its announcement, Epic promises behind-closed-doors demonstrations of the new tech every half-hour during the conference for "licensees, partners, prospective customers and the media." Additionally, Epic plans to hold free training sessions for Unreal Engine 3 licensees, covering topics such as "content creation best practices" and "rapid prototyping with Unreal Kismet." Making your Unreal characters look like they have cars strapped to their torsos apparently won't be covered. In a separate announcement, Epic notified UDK licensees that the royalty-free threshhold has been raised tenfold from $5,000 to $50,000 -- meaning Unreal developers don't pay royalities to Epic on the first $50K in (wholesale) revenue generated from their UDK-built games. That's pretty epic.
Google defends H.264 removal from Chrome, says WebM plug-ins coming to Safari and IE9
Google renewed a heated discussion when it said it was dropping H.264 support from Chrome's HTML5 video tag last week, but it seems the company's ready and willing to push its WebM alternative video format hard -- not only is hardware decoder IP now available for the VP8 codec, but the project team is presently readying WebM plug-ins for Safari and Internet Explorer 9, neither of which include it themselves. As to the little matter of whether any of this is the right move for the web at large, we'll paraphrase what Google had to say for itself: H.264 licenses cost money; Firefox and Opera don't support H.264 either; and big companies like Google are helping the little guy by championing this open alternative. We have to say, the eternal optimist in us is cheering them on. Oh, and the linguist in us, too. Read Google's own words at our source link, and decide for yourself.
Beatles receiving direct royalties in iTunes deal
Citing "industry sources," Reuters claims that direct royalties may be part of the deal that finally got The Beatles on iTunes. According to Reuters, "superstar artists" (like The Beatles) typically get 20-25 percent of retail revenues, which would equate to between 18 to 22.5 cents per track sold on iTunes. Supposedly, The Beatles secured a deal with Apple that gives the surviving band members (and the estates of John and George) far higher royalties than that, though it's unclear just how much higher; Reuters's sources didn't put any firm numbers on the deal. Earlier reports indicated that it was primarily disputes between The Beatles and music label EMI that kept the band's music off iTunes for so long, and it's very likely that royalty distribution was at the heart of the matter. To be honest, I'm not sure why it's taken this long for artists to get a bigger cut of digital sales. Under the old brick-and-mortar sales model, it seems like music labels would have had to pay out a lot more to market and distribute music than under a purely digital sales model. If The Beatles are getting a bigger slice of the profits from sales of their music, I see that as a good thing, and frankly I hope that becomes the rule rather than the exception.
MPEG-LA makes H.264 video royalty-free forever, as long as it's freely distributed
The H.264 codec that makes a good deal of digital video possible has actually been free to use (under certain conditions) for many years, but following recent controversies over the future of web video, rightholders have agreed to extend that freedom in perpetuity. Whereas originally standards organization MPEG-LA had said it wouldn't collect royalties from those freely distributing AVC/H.264 video until 2016, the limitless new timeframe may mean that content providers banking on WebM and HTML5 video won't have an expensive surprise in the years to come. Then again, patent licensing is complicated stuff and we'd hate to get your hopes up -- just know that if you're an end-user uploading H.264 content you own and intend to freely share with the world, you shouldn't expect a collection agency to come knocking on your door. PR after the break.
12 people charged in iTunes royalty fraud
I guess with all of the money flowing around iTunes, sooner or later someone would have to try to steal some of it. Twelve people have been charged in the UK with basically laundering money through iTunes -- they were allegedly uploading their own tracks onto the music sales service, then buying those same tracks with stolen credit card numbers. The fraudsters nabbed over $300,000 worth of royalties in just a four month period between September 2008 and January 2009. The Register doesn't note how the 12 (who come from a surprising number of various jobs and backgrounds) came up with this idea, or how they got caught, although there was an investigation underway by the FBI. iTunes wasn't the only service defrauded -- Amazon was reportedly used for some of the transactions as well. The suspects are scheduled to appear on bail next month, and I'm sure both Apple and Amazon have taken steps to make sure this doesn't happen again. Even so, out of all of the millions if not billions of dollars running through iTunes, if this $300,000 is all of the theft they need to worry about, Apple's doing pretty well anyway. [via MDN]
Rumor: Infinity Ward employees not leaving due to unpaid royalties, morale 'extremely low'
According to a report on Kotaku, a "source" has told the site that the remaining Infinity Ward developers still working for Activision in the wake of the recent leadership shakeup are holding out on leaving the company for now due to royalties owed by the publisher. As claimed by ex-Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West in their recent complaint against Activision (with regards to themselves, that is), the publisher is allegedly holding out on promised royalties owed to the entire company. The tipster says that, rather than a traditional salary-based reward system at IW, the studio pays "regular or even low salaries" and offers "ridiculous royalties" to the whole staff. Furthermore, the piece alleges that Activision "continues to delay royalties to other employees in order to keep them at the company" (though it's not clear whether that means other Activision-owned studios as well), and that morale at IW is supposedly "extremely low." We've asked Activision for comment on the claims and will update you if we hear more. Update: Activision responded by saying, "Activision doesn't comment on industry rumor or speculation." Not exactly a definitive "no," but not a confirmation by any means either. We'll keep you updated as we hear more.
Ousted Infinity Ward founders file suit against Activision
Former Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West are bringing a lawsuit against Activision for breach of contract and other claims, after Activision terminated their employment on March 1. The press release announcing the suit claims that Activision was scheduled to pay "substantial royalty payments," but fired them before the date of the payment. "Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public," attorney Robert Schwartz said, "last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual 'investigation' into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of 'insubordination' and 'breach of fiduciary duty,' which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st." In addition to compensation, the suit seeks to return the contractual rights Zampella and West previously had to the Modern Warfare brand. [Thanks Amnon!]
Analysts: No cause for concern over reported unpaid Modern Warfare 2 bonuses
Following the departures of two Infinity Ward executives, a related story has gained significant traction and deserves some attention. BingeGamer reports that the development studio "has yet to be paid a single dime in royalties for Modern Warfare 2," ostensibly to be paid by publisher Activision. As Infinity Ward is a wholly-owned Activision studio, we turned to some leading industry analysts to explain what appears to be a private contractual matter. EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich tells Joystiq, "I couldn't speak to what the royalty agreement between Activision and Infinity Ward is. If royalties haven't been paid out yet, I wouldn't consider that too alarming. The game has only been out for a little over 90 days. Additionally, it is common to see royalty agreements based upon factors such as hitting release date, review scores (a.k.a. 'Metacritic Clauses') or revenue milestones. I think if you just replace the word 'royalties' with 'bonus' it should make some more sense." Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter explains, "I don't know the nature of [Infinity Ward's] contract, but my bonus is paid after year-end (in February), and theirs is likely the same. The idea that they haven't been paid 'yet' is not all that surprising. The year just closed, and the final SEC documents were filed yesterday." He continues, "IW sold itself to Activision back in 2004, Activision owns the [Call of Duty] IP, and the guys leaving were employees under some kind of contract. Activision appears to believe that they have breached this contract, and may or may not be justified in withholding bonuses." Check out Pachter and Divnich's full analyses after the break. [Editor's note: This post has been altered to reflect updates in the Infinity Ward leadership shakeup.]
Nolan North believes voice acting royalties 'unfair' to expect in gaming
By now, you should be familiar with one of gaming's most prolific actors, Nolan North, made famous by his role as Uncharted's Nathan Drake. In an interview with GamePro, the actor talks about his meteoric rise in gaming. "There's no pressure when going in for an audition now, since I've worked on such big games," North told the site. With the actor seemingly guaranteed work, it's no surprise that Giant Bomb dedicated an entire award to him: The Northies, for the Best Performance by Nolan North. "I'm humbled by all this. I feel blessed." Of course, not all voice actors have been as lucky as Nolan North to get work with such regularity. Salaries for actors have always been a point of contention, especially with regards to royalties. In 2008, Grand Theft Auto IV's Michael Hollick slammed the industry for not providing better compensation for titles that go on to sell millions of units. North seems to disagree with that sentiment. "In all fairness, hundreds of people are working 12 hour days for several years to make a game, so it's unfair for me to expect residuals, given the amount of work I contribute." Perhaps it's that attitude that continues to provide North a steady lineup of gigs, including the upcoming Alpha Protocol and Dark Void. With Uncharted 3 and a new Assassin's Creed in the works, it's clear that Nolan can expect a few more paychecks in the immediate future.
