14 DAY TRIAL // Turbine, a development studio best known for creating The Lord of the Rings Online, is saying that it has sued publisher Atari claiming that it breached contract by reducing the support for MMO Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach so that Atari could produce and publish a D&D MMO project that it developed internally.
The two companies reached an agreement related to D&D Online: Stormreach at some point in 2003, with the game being released in 2006. Turbine is stating that even as it stepped up to shoulder the burden of publishing the videogame in North America, Atari did so in Europe.
Turbine is saying that Atari has messed up on the job “effectively choking off sales in Europe.” Losses are claimed to be in the region of 13 million dollars, of which the former was entitled to 3 million.
But Atari is also claimed to have planned since 2008 to undermine D&D Online. Turbine declared that “Atari knew... that it planned to immediately threaten to terminate the Agreement 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.” Turbine says that it wants Atari to pay up to 30 million dollars in damages.
The project referred to is probably the Cryptic-made Neverwinter Nights MMO, which has been rumored to be in development for a few months. Cryptic has been wholly acquired by Atari and is also working on Champions Online, a superhero-based MMO that is due out shortly. No release time frame has been announced for the Neverwinter Nights project and Atari will probably be looking to solve the law suit issues before its launch.