Valve forbidden from developing anything related to Bungie's new game: Destiny

[ríomhaire]

Develop have revealed the details of Halo developer Bungie's new ten-year contract with Activision. The studio split away from Microsoft in 2010 and left the Halo franchise behind them.

The contract contains an unusual demand that major FPS developers Valve, Epic and Gearbox are banned from developing any games in Bungie's new Destiny franchise. We're not sure why this needs to be prevented as Valve and Epic are not in the habit of developing games within the IPs of other well-established studios and though Gearbox have done work in both Valve's and Bungie's IPs before they are now a major studio in their own right with their own franchises.

Otherwise the contract outlines plans for Destiny and a spin-off series codenamed Comet. It also stipulates that there are to be four games in each series released between 2013 and 2020. Bungie are allowed to keep the rights to the Destiny franchise but cannot publish it with anyone other than Activsion until 2022. They are allowed to commit up to five percent of their staff to prototype a new Marathon game and if they make Activision enough money the are free to start working on it and other non-Activision published products with up to twenty five percent of their staff.

The contract also contains many clauses designed to protect Activison such as a number of escape clauses that allow them to terminate the contract or take control of the Destiny IP if Bungie fail to meet expectations.

You can read the rest of the contract details here.

Source: The Escapist

 

[Lasphere]

So how does that work? Why would Valve, Epic or Gearbox sign that contract? What do they get in return?
Or is there something I'm missing on how these things work?

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Okay? SOB?

 

[Krynn72]

lol, wtf

 

[Vegeta897]

Somebody explain this like I was a 5 year old.

 

[Eejit]

No veggie, we're not going to give you tips on chatting to 5 year olds.

 

[bad@chaos]

WHAAAAT! New Marathon!?

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

Makes zero goddamned sense.

 

[Lobster]

43 Years ago, a five year old Bobby Kotick sits in a sandbox discussing contractual obligations with with his latest playdate.. "Okay. We can be friends, but you aren't allowed to speak to any of the kids I don't like! If I find out you did, we can't be friends anymore! Oh and I'll tell on you!"

 

[Krynn72]

Somebody explain this like I was a 5 year old.

You know how every once in awhile we get someone wanting to get a team started for a mod he wants to make, but wont give out any information at all about what it is because he's afraid someone will steal his idea?

One of those people are now in charge of this company.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

I think I just figured it out the, Destiny Franchise is being developed on the UE3/4 engine, and being released on Steam. As for the Steam side, Activision don't want Bungie to reap the rewards for TF2 pre-order content when it becomes available to buy postlaunch, as the monetary benefits of that would go to the developer and bypass the Publisher (Activision) altogether.

As for Gearbox, I don't know how they fit into all this. Perhaps Activision don't want them to act as subcontractors? They were afterall responsible for porting Halo: Combat Evolved over to the PC.