Turbine sues Atari over D&D Online

By Oli Welsh Published 27 August, 2009

Pre-emptive strike against Cryptic rival?

Turbine, developer of Dungeons & Dragons Online, has filed a $30 million lawsuit against Atari over its licence to make the D&D MMO. Atari owns the rights to Dungeons & Dragons, and Turbine claims that it's trying to wriggle out of their agreement in order to launch its own, competing game.

According to the Courthouse News Service - which also published the complaint in a PDF - Turbine believes Atari has acted in bad faith, failing to support the game as agreed while continuing to accept royalty payments from Turbine.

Furthermore, Turbine contends that when Atari recently agreed to extend the companies' agreement to pave the way for the DDO Unlimited free-to-play version of the game, it was already planning to "manufacture a trumped-up and false basis to threaten to terminate the contractual relationship". Atari, it says, has now accused Turbine of withholding information and royalty fees.

This, Turbine believes, is an effort to "extort more money from Turbine or, alternately, to free itself from 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".

That supports recent rumours in Variety that Atari had put its acquisition Cryptic Studios to work on production of a Neverwinter Nights MMO - Neverwinter Nights also being based on the Dungeons & Dragons universe and rules.

Although Dungeons & Dragons Online has been running for some years with only modest subscriber numbers, Turbine has high hopes for the DDO Unlimited relaunch - which hits North America on 9th September - and clearly intends to fight its corner.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (11) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #1 2 years ago

    Funny really many in the EU were thinking the same issue between Turbine and Codemasters over DDO itself - Dispite that I'm backing Turbine on that one after Atari annoyied Bioware to hell - I'd rather see Turbine not them run the D&D games from now on

  • MasterNameless #2 2 years ago

    Oh dear, well someone has to say it...

    FRAUD ACTIONS!!!

  • penhalion #3 2 years ago

    I've never heard of this unlimited version. I'm also not sure why Atari have to justify how they use their own purchased IP rights.

    As for the underhanded tactics Atari is trying to use. Did they learn nothing from the Activision Vs Brutal Legends fiasco?

  • TheDudesRug #4 2 years ago

    Atari are still in business? :)

  • Freki #5 2 years ago

    They would be better off making a game based on D&D 4th Ed as it is already pretty much an MMO but on paper anyway.

  • Inigo #6 2 years ago

    I thought the whole point of NWN was to create user made mods. Making a MMO out of it seems a waste of the game.

    I was thinking of giving DDO a try when it becomes free.

  • Rubarack #7 2 years ago

    Atari have to justify their own purchased IP rights because they'd sold them to Turbine. I'm not sure how this fits in with their responsibilities though.

    Oh and Activision won the Brutal legend Fiasco, so if anyone learned anything it's to try the same kind of thing.

  • actionfitz #8 2 years ago

    "I was thinking of giving DDO a try when it becomes free. "

    you'll need to move stateside then, Codemasters will still be charging a fee for european players I think.

  • Ranger101 #9 2 years ago

    @TheDudesRug

    "Atari" = Ubisoft, not THE Atari of the 80's.
    Edited by 1 at 27/08/09 @ 15:58

  • Rack #10 2 years ago

    You can play the US version if you want though, and Codemasters grip on the license is looking shaky, so it may come to Europe sooner than you might think.

    I'd give it a go though, DDO is a great game, it really was only held back by it's unrealistic pricing structure.

  • moshegy #11 2 years ago

    @ranger101
    Atari isn't Ubisoft and it's actually the same old brand. Atari Corporation was bought by Hasbro, Hasbro later renamed to Infogrames and then to Atari, which they're called today.