Turbine Sue Atari Over D&D

When reading this news story, initially I thought this would be an easy write up. How wrong I was. Turbine has recently re-released it's struggling MMORPG Dungeons and Dragons Online. Adding a heaps of new content and injecting more enthusiasm than you can shake an enthusiastic stick at. Therefore Turbine have gotten understandably upset when Atari has announced plans to develop a rival MMO based on the same franchise.

Basically Turbine accuses Atari of not informing them about plans for a competing game within the same license, they stated "in an effort to extort more money from Turbine, or, alternately, to free itself from its obligations under the contracts in order to clear the way for the launch of its own competing MMO service based on the D&D and Advanced D&D intellectual properties."

Now to many, myself included, this seems like a whole lot of legal hogwash, it seems that basically, Turbine are very angry at Atari for supporting the free to play launch of D&D without telling them of an impending competitor. To make matters worse, Turbine have accused Atari of with holding payments, Atari responded to this statement with the classic school yard "No you missed payments!".

All in all, Turbine want thirty million and wont rest until it gets it. Atari cheated developers back in the early eighties and got stung, Turbine is out to get them again, you bastards Atari, you just never learn.

I wonder if the legal battle will be fought with a D20 and a Dungeon Master.