Hasbro sues Atari, seeks termination of D&D digital rights.

[Montague]

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3177372

So what specific wrongdoing does Hasbro accuse Atari of committing? When Atari sold off their European operations to Namco Bandai earlier this year, they entered into an agreement with the Japanese publisher (and Hasbro competitor) to distribute Atari products (including D&D Online) outside the U.S. until the year 2014. And according to Hasbro, this agreement violates their contract with Atari

Not sure what this means for DDO, but Cryptic's alleged unannounced 4th edition D&D MMO would be dead in the water if this goes through. Makes one wonder if this doesn't have more to do with Cryptic's performance as opposed to Namco.

[eldaec]

I don't imagine Cryptic would find it difficult to rebrand D&D4Online as "Here, take a quest, now kill some shit asshole, ok here's some loot, repeat" online.

They have some experience in this area.

[Montague]

I don't imagine Cryptic would find it difficult to rebrand D&D4Online as "Here, take a quest, now kill some shit asshole, ok here's some loot, repeat" online.

They have some experience in this area.

Good point. Not to mention there's plenty of minor RPG IP's to buy. Rolemaster Online here we come.

[Ingmar]

If they're really making a game that is mechanically D&D4e they'd also have to make some fairly large system changes in order to avoid just walking into another lawsuit. The transition would be harder than just reskinning a Marvel game with the Champions IP, I think.

Also I already posted this in the NWN Online speculation thread...

[Mrbloodworth]

AFAIK Turbine is already in a Cort case VS. Atari. Who seem to be fucking up royally recently.

[Soln]

I don't imagine Cryptic would find it difficult to rebrand D&D4Online as "Here, take a quest, now kill some shit asshole, ok here's some loot, repeat" online.

They have some experience in this area.

Good point. Not to mention there's plenty of minor RPG IP's to buy. Rolemaster Online here we come.

My God imagine.  Complicated, but light years ahead of D&D IMO.

[Ingmar]

Rolemaster without charts to look at? Charts were pretty much the entire point of that game!

[Stabs]

I think 1up's slant may be wrong.

DDO is the subject of a catfight between Atari and Turbine. Codemasters are sitting on the fence until it's resolved which has unfortunately meant they felt they couldn't adopt the F2P model so successfully used by Turbine.

Now what Turbine are probably after in the court case is for Atari to relinquish the licence so that they can take it over. Hasbro pressurising Atari may well encourage Atari to resolve this in Turbine's favour. Codemasters would then be able to work with Turbine to sell the game in Europe.

So what I think is happening is in one corner we have Atari and in the other corner we have Turbine and Hasbro. I think it would be much healthier for DDO if Atari could be cut out of the loop and with the others arrayed against them this could happen.

DDO is currently quite expensive to run for Turbine and Codemasters as they have to pay Atari royalties. They also have to pay for marketing because of the non-fulfilment of its obligations to market the product by Atari which is at the heart of the Turbine v Atari case.

If Hasbro can wrestle back digital rights they would probably licence Dungeons and Dragons to Turbine who already have a game running with a solid player base and (following the success of their F2P launch) quite high revenues.

There's some quite detailed amateur analysis by players on the DDO board:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=213727
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=208807
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=220214

I think these show that it's way more complex than simply DDO's in trouble as 1up suggest. Quite possibly these manoeuvres will save DDO, getting it out from under the yoke of a pretty onerous royalties agreement regarding money that Turbine has to pay Atari to operate the game.

[pxib]

Rolemaster Online here we come.

Where have you been? Welcome to twenty years ago. Feel free to go give the free trial a try.

EDIT: Wrong URL for the actual game.

[UnSub]

Already being discussed here.

My read on it is: 1) Atari vs Turbine is over the future of the MMO version while 2) Habro vs Atari is because something didn't check all the contracts when they sold out their European operations to Namco Bandai. In theory, Atari could go back to Namco Bandai and pull the D&D titles to settle things, but I'm not sure if either Namco or Hasbro would accept that. It looks like Hasbro wants the D&D licence back.

If Hasbro does get the licence, Cryptic's rumoured D&D title would be dead (Cryptic pretty much being Atari Online) and there is a chance Turbine's might be as well. Hasbro might want to offer up the licence to an entirely new company for an entirely new pool of money.

[Stabs]

Atari's share price is going down pretty fast.

They traded at 7.76 Euros on 7th December. Same stock is worth 4.73 Euros today.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=ATA.PA

[schild]

Whoever wins, we lose.

[Slyfeind]

Rolemaster Online here we come.

Where have you been? Welcome to twenty years ago.

DAOC was going to be Rolemaster Online too, for what that's worth.

Yeah, I have a feeling if Hasbro gets all other D&D shops shut down, they're going to lose out too....