14 DAY TRIAL // We know that God of War III is in the making, thanks to an official announcement and a brief trailer, but what we don't know whether we will ever get to play the game. There's a good chance that development might be slowed down or even stopped as main developer David Jaffe and Sony Computer Entertainment America are involved in a law suit related to alleged copyright infringement regarding the God of War franchise.
GamePolitics says that the suit is pending since February, when it was filed in the U.S. District Court in California. The plaintiffs clearly stipulate that both SCEA and David Jaffe are guilty of the allegations. Jonathan Bissoon-Dath and Barrette-Herzog are the ones who claim that they sent materials, including short fiction works and a map, to Sony Pictures and to SCEA shortly before development work began on the original game. They say that their material contains ideas and graphical concepts that the God of War team used in the games even though the two were never compensated or mentioned in the game credits.
Their The Adventures of Owen: Owen's Olympic Adventure and the map they sent are said to present extensive similarities when it comes to the plot, the character relationships, the themes, the settings and the mood, the pace and even the dialog with the first and second God of War games.
SCEA has responded to the accusations by saying that they are “inaccurate, incomplete, abstracted and/or misleading”. SCEA and David Jaffe are seeking to also sue for the legal costs associated with their defense. The problem is that if a judge ruled that, development on the third God of War game should be frozen.
Jonathan Bissoon-Dath and Barrette-Herzog could be trying to get big money, as God of War has been a very profitable franchise, with its reinterpretation of classical Greek mythology.