Turbine sues Atari over Dungeons and Dragons Online licensing

Stick with us, because this could get confusing: Courthouse News reports that Turbine – the Massachusetts-based developer behind the Dungeon and Dragons Online MMO – is suing Atari, publisher of the title. At issue is Turbine's claim that Atari has "breached a licensing agreement" related to the development of the free-to-play Dungeons and Dragons Online Unlimited. Turbine says that while it has spent millions developing the franchise "and continues to invest money to operate and maintain the service," Atari "acted unreasonably in its efforts to promote and distribute [Dungeons and Dragons Online] and failed to devote the necessary resources to it."

So, Atari continued to accept payments ("including future royalty payments") from Turbine for the Dungeons and Dragons Online "sublicense" though, Turbine alleges, Atari had a "strategy" to either "terminate Turbine as part of a shakedown" or "proceed with termination in bad faith to benefit from its own competing product at Turbine's expense." We can assume that "competing product" is Atari's upcoming Champions Online MMO, being developed by its recently acquired in-house MMO dev Cryptic Studios.

So, to recap: Atari wants to terminate the license agreement with Turbine to develop and maintain the Dungeons and Dragons Online MMO franchise, including the just-announced "Unlimited" free-to-play variant. Turbine says that such a termination threatens its "past investment" in the franchise and the "goodwill" it's developed with the DDO playerbase, and those they expect to play DDO Unlimited. And now, it's up to the courts!

[Thanks, Mark]

Reader Comments (22)

Big game conglomerate vs Small game studio...

Guess who wins?

We do!!! Cheap games for all!

(/s? probably!)

Ouch, my litigation hurts

With no clear-cut victor, the only solution is for each party to roll a d20.

Those cheaky bastards. So Turbine is saying that Atari is purposefully sabotaging D&D in order to clear the way for Champions? And Turbine, all the while, has been steadily investing in D&D to sustain it as a real competitor in the MMO genre?

Sneaky...sneaky...Atari.

In other news: TITS!

Wow, this is one massive legal clusterfuck.

If turbine was stupid enough to continue investing into a game that didn't even rival the player count of The Matrix Online, that is absolutely pathetic.

However, on the other end of the coin, if Atari's trying to kill D&D with this unlimited free play program to get people to segway over to Champions, that's absolutely shit practice as well.

I'm sure Atari's legal team will find a way to settle this out of court, but i think both parties are at fault in this situation...

Its a battle to be the world's tallest midget.

DDO was/is a horrible game, and I'm sure the numbers show it. Turbine is sitting on a steaming pile (both as a game and possibly now as a franchise). Atari is looking for a way to back out, ANY way to back out...

Although, if Atari is putting their faith in Champions Online, boy are they gonna be bummed.

My baby's daddy is a dog. He's been spending mo' time and attenshun wit' his oth'a baby than mine!

I dont feel sorry for Turbine at all. They shoved out Asheron's Call 2, so they could collect a check from their publisher all the while focusing solely on creating their game engine and not a quality game. They screwed their AC fans for a big IP (D&D) and when they got the big IP they delivered another crappy game. Net/net don't blame Atari because your game sucked.

Poor Atari. They just can't catch a break.

I played DDO for a while and I didn't hate it. I thought they severely limited the possiblities with many Eberon (game setting) specific classes being dropped (the Artificer and the Inquisitor would have been really cool) and making a modified version of the 3.5 rule set that was entirely their own. Yes you can never have the EXACT gameplay as the game but a lot of things were left out, poorly implimented, or simply ignored. Now that being said, it wasn't horrible, it had some fun moments and was a bit of a change from the normal games. Turbine did a far better job with LotRO which has a far superior look and feel to the game. That being said, I doubt Atari would "kill" an IP like D&D for a game like Champions. Whilst both being MMOs they are not both the same player base. Very different settings and the different natures of the game are going to generate a different market segment. I just think DDO came out at a time when there were a large number of games coming out and fell to the market pressures and some poor decisions. I mean look at Conan, that was supposed to revolutionize the MMO world but it's hardly a footnote now when they release an entire revamp to their game that adds dozens of mid level hours of gameplay and an entire new race and region. I don't think we are going to see serious contenders in the MMO market until Star Wars and Startrek come out.

DDO is obviously doing better than the Matrix Online was. It's not closing, it had no plans to close and Turbine continues to devote manpower to it. The comparison there is specious.

It's pretty clear that Atari hasn't done jack shit with the game since launch other than accept checks. I've seen no evidence to the contrary.

DDO is a decent game that has gotten significantly better since its initial launch, in any event.

Wasn't Atari going under pretty fast awhile ago or did that somehow turn around? I feel like I missed something.

I got into the beta for the free version and it was a snoozefest. I grew up playing D&D/AD&D and other pen and paper RPGs back in the 80's. I can't believe that people keep screwing up the license...sure there have been a few good PC games but stuff like this ends up portraying the brand as bland and generic. There are so many cool aspects to the various worlds of TSR, especially the fantasty stuff beyond the surface of the world. There are mulitple plains, dimensions, etc, etc, etc, etc that could be taken into a huge epic based MMO rather than just another game where you kill rats and scrounge for a decent piece of armor. They had the potential to create something different and grandiose but instead they created another lame mediocre hunk of meh.

I don't care what happens to them or the game itself.

Maybe, and just maybe, Atari thinks that DDO will do better in a free to play model. It's not good enough for people to pay to play, but it may just be good enough to offer as a free to play with well placed advertisments (they could put them in load screens) and micro-transactions.

the competing product is not Champions Online but a NWN type MMO develop by Cyptic which was briefly mention a whille back by a Cyrptic developer. At the time of DDO release Atari culture was to release a game, and forget it even existed while they collected payment of the game.
If the court rules against Atari ,there is a chance Turbine may try to prevent Atari and Cryptic form releasing a DnD mmo till 2016.

A Never Winter Nights MMO makes more sense. It would probably kill DnD online. NWN 1 and 2 had some fairly popular player created persistant worlds, and people have been begging for a NWN MMO. I never really got into Never Winter Nights though, so I'll probably end up passing unless they do something other then create a World of Warcraft clone as every MMO seems to be doing now.

DDO was awful anyway. I don't even see how people were paying to play that crap.

Does eveything need to be sexed up? seriously?

DDO is great game now. It will be a success either way. I've played new beta on this vacations and new players' response was OVERWHELMINGLY good.

Look for more info and discussion here. Those of you who say Turbine wasted D&D license sure need to reconsider their opinions again:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24997
http://www.massively.com/2009/08/26/breaking-turbine-sues-atari-over-dungeons-and-dragons-online/
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/73369

Take care and check it out yourself. This is a unique, most advanced fantasy MMO you can find. Also with DX10 graphics if you'd like.

Also, check this long discussion here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/248991

And dare to learn something, naysayers ; ).

It seems pretty clear that Atari intends to kill off the DDO:Unlimited game.

Turbine seems to be the one who was keeping the game alive.

If there is any announcement by Atari in the near future of a similar MMORPG title, I think that would lend even more strength to the above hypothesis

Turbine sues Atari over Dungeons and Dragons Online licensing

Reader Comments (22)

Posted: Aug 26th 2009 11:51AM (Unverified) said

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