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Kotaku: Trendy Entertainment (Dungeon Defenders) suing Wildcard (Ark) over developer

C

Corpekata

Banned
Link to Jason Schrier's article

Some excerpts:

Who really designed Ark: Survival Evolved? A lawsuit, filed late last year, alleges that there’s a messy story behind the development of one of Steam’s biggest hits.

The players involved are Trendy Entertainment, the company behind Dungeon Defenders, and Studio Wildcard, the start-up game dev behind Ark, which launched in Early Access last year on both Steam and Xbox One. In a lawsuit filed against Wildcard in December of 2015, Trendy alleges that one of their former employees, game designer Jeremy Stieglitz, breached his contract and has been secretly working on Ark since he resigned from his position in 2014.
Click to expand...

Three years ago, Trendy employees reached out to Kotaku to complain about working conditions at their studio. They said they were forced to work excessive overtime, to the tune of seven days a week, and they claimed they were too scared to complain. They were worried about retribution from their creative director, Stieglitz. In June 2013, we published an article about these claims.

Within the next day, Trendy took action. They moved Stieglitz off the team he’d been leading, and by the end of the year they’d created a new imprint of the company for him called NomNom Games, to helm development on the online shooter Monster Madness. According to an employment letter dated September 23, 2013, Stieglitz’s new role would both maintain his current title of Chief Technology Officer at Trendy and grant him the new position of president at NomNom Games. The reshuffling didn’t last long. On April 4, 2014, Stieglitz sent an e-mail to the upper management at both Trendy and their main investor, Insight Venture Partners, with the subject “Might need to leave.”
Click to expand...


The TLDR is that Trendy is suing them over Jeremy Stieglitz, alleging that he worked on the game and poached talent from the studio while still employeed at Trendy. Stieglitz, if you don't recall, was the subject of Kotaku's Video game studio from hell article and seems like a real fun guy.
 
P

Purple Cheeto

Member
Trendy alleges that Stieglitz then called them to say he “would not engage in such contractually prohibited conduct again.”
Click to expand...

So he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and kept going. This guy is a real piece of work.
 
J

JMTHEFOX

Member
I don't know why Trendy is claiming that Ark is competing with Dungeon Defenders when they are two completely different games.
 
F

Fisty

Member
Always sad to hear bad news about Trendy, i visited there once and met some great people, even got to hold the NGP (Vita prototype). They were working on a UE3 Gears-like when I was there
 
OmegaDL50

OmegaDL50

Member
JMTHEFOX said:
I don't know why Trendy is claiming that Ark is competing with Dungeon Defenders when they are two completely different games.
Click to expand...

Apparently in the industry if you leave a company there is some sort of grace period, a contract of sorts that you must agree to upon leaving the company that you won't immediately work for another studio for predetermined amount of time.

I believe Kojima even after leaving Konami more or less had his hands tied what was a period of 6 months (Was it 6? or could it have been 3? some clarification anyone)

Now I'm not saying these same circumstances also applied to Steiglitz, but from what I'm reading in the OP the premise sounds similar, except for the part of stealing talent away from Trendy at least.
 
S

sueil

Member
OmegaDL50 said:
Apparently in the industry if you leave a company there is some sort of grace period, a contract of sorts that you must agree to upon leaving the company that you won't immediately work for another studio for predetermined amount of time.

I believe Kojima even after leaving Konami more or less had his hands tied what was a period of 6 months (Was it 6? or could it have been 3? some clarification anyone)

Now I'm not saying these same circumstances also applied to Steiglitz, but from what I'm reading in the OP the premise sounds similar, except for the part of stealing talent away from Trendy at least.
Click to expand...

It's called a non compete and its common in business.
 
U

Uthred

Member
OmegaDL50 said:
Apparently in the industry if you leave a company there is some sort of grace period, a contract of sorts that you must agree to upon leaving the company that you won't immediately work for another studio for predetermined amount of time.

I believe Kojima even after leaving Konami more or less had his hands tied what was a period of 6 months (Was it 6? or could it have been 3? some clarification anyone)

Now I'm not saying these same circumstances also applied to Steiglitz, but from what I'm reading in the OP the premise sounds similar, except for the part of stealing talent away from Trendy at least.
Click to expand...

A non compete clause, common in more than just the videogame industry
 
P

PSqueak

Banned
Wasn't Jeremy Stieglitz the guy who couldn't even look at the eyes of the female employees of the studio, demanded to make the cutesy characters from dungeon defenders "sexier" and in general was socially awkward sexist pig?
 
G

Glix

Member
OmegaDL50 said:
Apparently in the industry if you leave a company there is some sort of grace period, a contract of sorts that you must agree to upon leaving the company that you won't immediately work for another studio for predetermined amount of time.

I believe Kojima even after leaving Konami more or less had his hands tied what was a period of 6 months (Was it 6? or could it have been 3? some clarification anyone)

Now I'm not saying these same circumstances also applied to Steiglitz, but from what I'm reading in the OP the premise sounds similar, except for the part of stealing talent away from Trendy at least.
Click to expand...

Its not "in the industry". Execs at that level negotiate contracts and usually there is a non-compete clause and an intellectual property clause. They are free to try and negotiate them down if they wish. This is in all industries.
 
B

BreezyLimbo

Banned
OmegaDL50 said:
Apparently in the industry if you leave a company there is some sort of grace period, a contract of sorts that you must agree to upon leaving the company that you won't immediately work for another studio for predetermined amount of time.

I believe Kojima even after leaving Konami more or less had his hands tied what was a period of 6 months (Was it 6? or could it have been 3? some clarification anyone)

Now I'm not saying these same circumstances also applied to Steiglitz, but from what I'm reading in the OP the premise sounds similar, except for the part of stealing talent away from Trendy at least.
Click to expand...

Not only that but if Steiglitz worked on Ark while AT Trendy studios, then contractually(If the contract had a stipulation) that data he worked on would belong to Trendy.

It would be a breach of contract.
 
OmegaDL50

OmegaDL50

Member
sueil said:
It's called a non compete and its common in business.
Click to expand...

Uthred said:
A non compete clause, common in more than just the videogame industry
Click to expand...

Right, thanks for the clarification.

Glix said:
Its not "in the industry". Execs at that level negotiate contracts and usually there is a non-compete clause and an intellectual property clause. They are free to try and negotiate them down if they wish. This is in all industries.
Click to expand...

Yeah, well I'm just a low-level IT consultant / Tier 1 tech support guy. I'm sure there have to be some contingencies in place at the higher levels so that things like corporate secrets or sensitive information wouldn't be passed on to a competitive company.

It would make sense for those in the higher levels of a corporate hierarchy need to have some clause that doesn't allow them to just immediately leave one company filled with the knowledge and secrets of his previous firm just to apply that current know-how in his new working environment.

A grace period would make sense to allow the company to upgrade their personnel security policies or whatnot to prevent information leaks.
 
C

Cyborgmatt

Member
$40m jesus.

Seems like it's true as this was tweeted out after the Reddit thread went up. Not sure why they would tell random fans about the case in DMs and not expect it to leak.

w5llBwc.png
 
R

RelaxedOtter

Member
You really need to read the contracts you are signing, and not have a "they won't catch me" attitude when it comes to these things.
But if they settled for $40m, Steiglitz really fucked up.
 
KonradLaw

KonradLaw

Member
Non-compete clausules should be illegal, unless the previous employer is willing to pay to full salary for that grace period.

Also..wow 40m. ARK must be making crazy money.
 
RiccochetJ

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
They're lucky that Trendy didn't try and take over the IP.

KonradLaw said:
Non-compete clausules should be illegal, unless the previous employer is willing to pay to full salary for that grace period.

Also..wow 40m. ARK must be making crazy money.
Click to expand...

I personally don't have a problem with them. I wish it were mandated for government employees.

I'm still pissed about that woman on the FCC who approved the Comcast merger and then shortly after was hired by Comcast as a lobbyist.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commissioner-to-join-comcast/?_r=0
 
Surface of Me

Surface of Me

I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
KonradLaw said:
Non-compete clausules should be illegal, unless the previous employer is willing to pay to full salary for that grace period.

Also..wow 40m. ARK must be making crazy money.
Click to expand...

Agree with the bolded, it's even starting to trend into fucking manual god damned labor. It's fucking bullshit to just hold a noose next to an employees neck like that.
 
Stiler

Stiler

Member
Seriously, non-competes need to take a hike. A company should NOT be able to determine that you can't work (And thus provide for your family, etc), it's absurd and why it was even allowed in the first place is astounding.

It's one thing to have a contract where you can't poach talent, it's another to say you are fired but can't work for "x" time now.
 
KonradLaw

KonradLaw

Member
RiccochetJ said:
I personally don't have a problem with them. I wish it were mandated for government employees.

I'm still pissed about that woman on the FCC who approved the Comcast merger and then shortly after was hired by Comcast as a lobbyist.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commissioner-to-join-comcast/?_r=0
Click to expand...
I don't have problem with the clausules themselves. But they're extreme luxury for the employeer and that employeer should pay hefty sum for them. Otherwise it becomes nothing more than another way to screw people.
If somebody's work is really so damn important that you're scared it will damage your own interest then you shouldn't have problem paying him for not working. If you're not willing to pay him salary for the grace period, then he really isn't all that important to begin with and you're putting non-compete clause solely to screw him over.
 
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