Industry-leading dirt-bags ZeniMax / Bethesda allegedly deliberately destroyed one more game before selling to Microsoft

[Delicieuxz]

Ragnarok, the publisher of Rune II, has updated their lawsuit against former Rune II developer Human Head to include Bethesda and ZeniMax. The lawsuit alleges that those companies conspired together to sabotage and kill Rune II before and as it launched to prevent it from competing with the Elder Scrolls series, and Ragnarok is seeking $100+ million in damages.

 

Ragnarok alleges that Human Head held secret negotiations with Bethesda and allowed Bethesda to play an early development version of their game, in defiance of confidentiality agreements, and that after playing the game Bethesda regarded Rune II as a threat to their Elder Scrolls series and decided to sabotage its release together with Human Head (a studio which was, themselves, destroyed by Bethesda back in 2012).

 

Just 5 days before Rune II launched, Human Head shut-down its studio and let Ragnarok know that they'd sold themselves to Bethesda, with all of Human Head's staff becoming employees of the newly-created Roundhouse Studios - a studio which Bethesda had created two weeks prior to Human Head's surprise announcement. And with its sale to Bethesda, Human Head gave Bethesda all of their Rune II development equipment, which included Rune II's source code and trade secrets that were the property of Ragnarok.

 

Ragnarok says they demanded the hand-over of Rune II's source code so that Ragnarok could continue to support the game themselves, but Bethesda refused for months, despite that the source code was exclusively Ragnarok's property. When Bethesda eventually handed-over the source code, Ragnarok says they found that it was also sabotaged, with parts of it missing and parts of it altered in damaging ways.

 

 

If you're familiar with Bethesda's history, then you already know that Bethesda has a lengthy history of doing things like this, and that Bethesda even purposefully destroyed Human Head back in 2012 as part of a hostile-acquisition attempt that failed but left Human Head financially destroyed and unable to work on another large project until Rune II.

 

If you aren't familiar with Bethesda's history of evil business practices, you can read of some of them in this thread:

 

 

I really think that people should stop supporting Bethesda. Aside from them being industry-leading scumbags led by all-around not good people who not only rob other developers but their own customers as well with awful paid-mods practices, they don't make good games, they have about the worst (as in, completely moronic) writing in the entire "AAA" industry, their production quality certainly isn't anywhere near "AAA" level, and Todd Howard is a painfully shallow-minded and talentless hack who only knows how to take things away from a game until it's an utter pile of generic, boring crap. I fully think that they don't deserve even a third of the popularity they've had.

 

 

 

As for Rune II, Ragnarok have not given-up on the game. They've formed a new development studio, called Studio 369, to carry-on development and support of the game, with the game (which was previously EGS exclusive) being 'reborn' on Steam on November the 13th.

 

Ragnarok's relaunch of the game takes direct aim at Human Head with its rebranded title of RUNE II: Decapitation Edition. And Rune II's Steam store page says:

Quote

THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL ME….SHOULD RUN!

 

Abandoned and sabotaged by the original developers, RUNE II was left in a state of disarray. Raised from the ashes by Studio 369, the game has now emerged for a Steam launch as a re-envisioned story of betrayal, rebirth and revenge. Severing that old human head has freed RUNE II and it is now a glorious Viking adventure.

 

The re-launch of the game looks to be greatly expanded over the state Human Head left it in.

 

 

 

 

Sources:

 

Rune 2 publisher sues Human Head Studios for abandoning the game

 

Bethesda intentionally sabotaged Rune 2 to protect The Elder Scrolls, lawsuit update claims

 

 

[GoodEnough]

their games still use less ram than modded minecraft lmao

[SolarNova]

The AAA game development and publishing industry is a steaming pile of crap tbh.

 

The last thing i ever want to hear about is a liked franchise being published or otherwise developed and released by large AAA publisher/dev.

 

On the flip side, if i hear some AA Dev/publisher or indie team working on an old franchise that was well liked, I have hope and look forward to such releases.

 

Ofc theres exceptions to everything, and here is one.

 

if such a small AA or indie dev/publisher picks up a game, then announces its got Chinese company backing or otherwise intends to go F2P / mobile. That also spells disaster.

 

Case in point. Torchlight 3.

While the dev made the better decision to change over to Single payment PC and console game, the foundation was built for a F2P ,almost mobile like game compatible with the Switch, and it shows. The game is shallow as fk, even for a ARPG, but demands AA prices.

[Deus Voltage]

This made my blood boil a lot more than I expected. Imagine if iconic titles like New Vegas or San Andreas/NFS MW 2005 were never made because of fuckery like this. Man I hate Bethesda so much right now.

[Delicieuxz]

18 hours ago, Deus Voltage said:

This made my blood boil a lot more than I expected. Imagine if iconic titles like New Vegas or San Andreas/NFS MW 2005 were never made because of fuckery like this. Man I hate Bethesda so much right now.

If it helps to imagine what that would be like, the original Prey 2 looked awesome but it doesn't exist to be played today precisely because Bethesda killed Human Head studios in a failed hostile acquisition attempt.

 

 

 

Ragnarok also say that some planned game called Oblivion Song had to be abandoned because of what Bethesda and Human Head did to Rune II.

[NovaFinch]

Something seems off about including a big name like Bethesda in the lawsuit right before the relaunch of the game. Calling Rune II a 'threat' to Skyrim/The Elder Scrolls is just absurd, it's a low budget Viking RPG released 8 years after Skyrim and will be forgotten about long before the next one is released.

You might also want to ease up on the bias with that title. Human Head seems to be a lot more to blame for the failure of Rune II than Bethesda was since they were looking for a way out no matter what and it just so happened that Bethesda were the ones to take them.

[PlayStation 2]

2 hours ago, Deus Voltage said:

Imagine if iconic titles like New Vegas or San Andreas/NFS MW 2005 were never made because of fuckery like this.

Too bad that MW2005 sucks dick. 

More on-topic with this, this genuinely does seem to be on Human Head rather than Bethesda. I get why a lot of people don't like Bethesda: I couldn't give a shit about them. Never played a game of theirs, probably never will. But this doesn't really seem like Bethesda strangled the devs, but rather a company looking for an easy way out.

[bit]

4 hours ago, NovaFinch said:

Something seems off about including a big name like Bethesda in the lawsuit right before the relaunch of the game. Calling Rune II a 'threat' to Skyrim/The Elder Scrolls is just absurd, it's a low budget Viking RPG released 8 years after Skyrim and will be forgotten about long before the next one is released.

You might also want to ease up on the bias with that title. Human Head seems to be a lot more to blame for the failure of Rune II than Bethesda was since they were looking for a way out no matter what and it just so happened that Bethesda were the ones to take them.

no this was 100% bethesda and no one else, no other party had any hand in this /s

[WereCat]

Oh man, I played Rune II so many times and yet I forgot about this game... it was so good for the time. If these allegations are true, I'm not even that surprised. Bethesda deserves to be hated on for more than just this.

[CarlBar]

11 hours ago, handymanshandle said:

Too bad that MW2005 sucks dick. 

More on-topic with this, this genuinely does seem to be on Human Head rather than Bethesda. I get why a lot of people don't like Bethesda: I couldn't give a shit about them. Never played a game of theirs, probably never will. But this doesn't really seem like Bethesda strangled the devs, but rather a company looking for an easy way out.

 

Depends. Once Human Head became Bethesda's property they where responsible for everything it did. if it really did refuse to hand over the source code and if it did sabotage it, thats on Bethesda 110%.

[Delicieuxz]

7 hours ago, NovaFinch said:

Something seems off about including a big name like Bethesda in the lawsuit right before the relaunch of the game. Calling Rune II a 'threat' to Skyrim/The Elder Scrolls is just absurd, it's a low budget Viking RPG released 8 years after Skyrim and will be forgotten about long before the next one is released.

You might also want to ease up on the bias with that title. Human Head seems to be a lot more to blame for the failure of Rune II than Bethesda was since they were looking for a way out no matter what and it just so happened that Bethesda were the ones to take them.

Human Head are responsible for their actions. But the suit also alleges Bethesda to have done a lot of stuff that it should have known it shouldn't be doing:

 

- holding secret negotiations to poach a developer before it completes its pre-existing contractual obligations

- disregarding publisher confidentiality by playing an early development build of the game to scope it out (is it OK for people to steal Bethesda development builds and let others play them?)

- refusing to hand-over the source code and assets

- acquiring the developer mere days before the launch of the game they'd been working on, undermining the launch of that game

[Warin]

Am I the only one who finds it a little suspicious that a developer didn’t have the source code in house for a game they designed and built? If they owned it, why wouldn’t they have retained a copy of their property? 

[Delicieuxz]

Just now, Warin said:

Am I the only one who finds it a little suspicious that a developer didn’t have the source code in house for a game they designed and built? If they owned it, why wouldn’t they have retained a copy of their property? 

The developer, Human Head, had the source code and they gave it to Bethesda when they sold their equipment to them. But the source code was owned by the publisher, Ragnarok, who Human Head were making the game for.

 

Human Head wasn't an in-house developer of Ragnarok's.

[Warin]

Ahhh. I got mixed up. I thought Ragnarok was doing the development for Human Head.  Thanks for the clarification.

[NovaFinch]

1 hour ago, Delicieuxz said:

Human Head are responsible for their actions. But the suit also alleges Bethesda to have done a lot of stuff that it should have known it shouldn't be doing:

 

- holding secret negotiations to poach a developer before it completes its pre-existing contractual obligations

- disregarding publisher confidentiality by playing an early development build of the game to scope it out (is it OK for people to steal Bethesda development builds and let others play them?)

- refusing to hand-over the source code and assets

- acquiring the developer mere days before the launch of the game they'd been working on, undermining the launch of that game

 

- Human Head was in talks with multiple people and this isn't an uncommon thing to happen (Microsoft aquired Obsidian during the development of The Outer Worlds remember).

- Is there any evidence to support that Bethesda played an early version of the game?

- How can the source code simultaneously not be handed over and also be damaged/sabotaged as the lawsuit alleges?

- Days before launch doesn't matter, the publisher should have had everything it needed to launch by that point. The state the game was in is on Human Head's upper management not on the majority of the staff that Bethesda hired under Roundhouse.

 

I think Human Head knew that Rune II was going to flop and looking for a way out of having to support a game that makes no money they ceased to exist and their staff were hired by Bethesda. All Bethesda did was enable Human Head to do something that was going to happen anyway.

[Delicieuxz]

18 hours ago, NovaFinch said:

 

- Human Head was in talks with multiple people and this isn't an uncommon thing to happen (Microsoft aquired Obsidian during the development of The Outer Worlds remember).

- Is there any evidence to support that Bethesda played an early version of the game?

- How can the source code simultaneously not be handed over and also be damaged/sabotaged as the lawsuit alleges?

- Days before launch doesn't matter, the publisher should have had everything it needed to launch by that point. The state the game was in is on Human Head's upper management not on the majority of the staff that Bethesda hired under Roundhouse.

 

I think Human Head knew that Rune II was going to flop and looking for a way out of having to support a game that makes no money they ceased to exist and their staff were hired by Bethesda. All Bethesda did was enable Human Head to do something that was going to happen anyway.

Outer Worlds is Obsidian's own game and they were their own publisher. So, they weren't engaging in any bad-faith practices by holding talks with a competitor to their current employer who they had contractual obligations to. But Human Head were contractually obligated to Ragnarok and were holding secret buyout meetings with another publisher.

 

Where did you see it said that Human Head were in talks with multiple companies?

 

As said in my post, Ragnarok alleges that Human Head allowed Bethesda to play a development version of Rune II. If there's proof of it, that's probably something Ragnarok will reveal during the trial.

 

As also said in the OP, Ragnarok say that Rune II's source code was withheld from them for months before it was finally handed-over. Ragnarok say the source code they eventually received had been altered in damaging ways. In their lawsuit filing, Ragnarok also say that Human Head tried to alter the version of Rune II that was uploaded to Epic Games Store without authority from Ragnarok to do so.

 

The timing of Human Head's announcement does matter if Human Head should have known it could have a damaging impact on Rune II's release, and particularly if it can be established that Human Head chose their announcement timing to sabotage Rune II's release.

 

As Human Head were working for Ragnarok on a contractual basis, they didn't have to worry about whether it was successful or not because they were getting paid whatever their contract said they would be paid - which I don't think included a royalty fee (but if you find information in the available materials that says otherwise, let me know).

 

Ragnarok say that Rune II was a success (I'm assuming that means financially) for them despite the alleged sabotage.

 

 

Bethesda has a history of trying to acquire Human Head through sabotage: They bankrupted Human Head in 2012 in an attempt to force HH to sell their company to Bethesda at a super low price. Bethesda and ZeniMax have also acted thuggishly against many other developers. So, the idea of Bethesda sabotaging a developer is not unbelievable.

[PineyCreek]

Holy crap, that's evil! Both Bethesda (in a bad way) and the game (in a good way).

[Briggsy]

ironic/poetic that microsoft bought zenimax out, considering microsoft has been "buying out" their competition for decades in a similar fashion. 

[NovaFinch]

14 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

-snip-

The Outer Worlds was published by Private Division but yes Obsidian does own the IP.

I could be wrong but that's the impression I got from this section of the lawsuit:

It's all just allegations now, best not to assume it's a fact until the trial. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.

Seems like they had contracts to provide post-game support and also develop 'Oblivion Song' which is possibly something they wanted out of but that's still on Human Head not Bethesda.

The only numbers we have for Rune II really are reviews which put it at about a 5/10 and Youtube trailers with the official one getting 236,768 views and less than 400 ratings. The Steam release will give more information in terms of player counts but until then there's not a whole lot to go off of other than Ragnarok's word which is far from impartial.

Bethesda didn't sabotage Human Head (this time anyway), Human Head went to Bethesda looking to be acquired by them. I just can't see any possible reason why Bethesda would want to sabotage Rune II, their entire argument of it being a 'Skyrim Killer' is based on a quote from someone who watched a pre-alpha trailer a full year and a half before release.

It feels like Ragnarok is pulling a publicity stunt by roping Bethesda in now and using the entire situation as a way to market the steam release.

[CarlBar]

10 hours ago, NovaFinch said:

It's all just allegations now, best not to assume it's a fact until the trial. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.

 

The Sabotaged code and withheld code however are going to be much more than allegations. If Ragnarok don't have some degree of basis in that claim Bethesda/Zenimax could counter-sue which would be baaaad.

[Eaglerino]

sounds like a lot of accusations and not much else. don't really see this going anywhere but an undisclosed settlement a few months from now

[dalekphalm]

Interesting allegations. If they turn out to be true (all conjecture right now), that’s terrible. 
 

However with that in mind, the OP’s personal bias is way too aggressive here. If there’s any truth to this, Ragnarok will have their day in court to prove it. 

[Exprima]

Not saying they shouldn't sue but even if they're on to something $100M seems a bit rich for that... game.