Zenimax VS Oculus VR : le procès est lancé
Dans trois semaines, nous saurons si la nouvelle bataille juridique du moment mène à un simple coup d'épée dans l'eau, ou une bonne occasion pour Zenimax de renflouer tranquillement ses caisses.
Bloomberg vient en effet de livrer les premiers instants du combat juridique qui oppose la maison-mère de Bethesda à Oculus VR, le premier pointant s'être fait voler en partie la technologie VR qui a permis de faire l'Oculus Rift. Les avocats de Zenimax ont remis sur la table leurs arguments, à savoir de John Carmack est entré en contact avec Palmer Luckey il y a quelques années pour l'aider à améliorer le prototype VR qui deviendra (avec le temps) l'Oculus. Problème, à l'époque, Carmack était encore employé d'iD Software, et a donc (selon son ex-employeur) exploité son temps de travail ainsi que les technologies de Zenimax pour se lancer dans ce projet, preuve en est d'un prototype de DOOM 3 en VR montré à l'E3 2012, quelques mois avant le départ de Carmack qui a rejoint… Oculus VR.
En bref, pour Zenimax, le prototype de Palmer Luckey n'avait de base rien de viable et il ne serait jamais parvenu à pondre l'Oculus sans l'aide de Carmack et la technologie de Zenimax. Oculus VR qui se contente pour le moment de rétorquer que son adversaire ne souhaite que se faire de l'argent sur un hardware qu'ils n'ont jamais réussi à développer eux-même, faute de talent et de patience.
Les trois semaines de procès verront donc défiler quelques acteurs majeurs, dont Mark Zuckerberg vu que Facebook a racheté Oculus VR pour 2 milliards de dollars… soit l'équivalent de la somme demandée par Zenimax dans cet affrontement. Ce sera aussi l'occasion pour Palmer Luckey de donner des nouvelles, l'homme ayant pris soin de disparaître médiatiquement après avoir été accusé publiquement de soutenir (de manière détournée) Donald Trump lors de la campagne présidentielle.
publié le 11/01/2017 à 17:23 par
Gamekyo
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commentaires (7)
They presented it as them putting it in writing for the higher amounts of money they would now provide (which is legally sound and should be done). Because bethesda/zeni have tons more money and clout, they promised a much bigger budget, a marketing budget of around 5x more than the original contract stipulated, new machines, better building, more people, etc. When a company buys a contract, they have 0 obligation to change it or modify it. They could have simply paid out what was due, so the thought of a bigger budget and shit entice Arkane.
With those changes though, they also changed the milestone wording and added some. This is normal when increasing budgets, because milestones are how studios get paid. But milestones are meant to be solid goals. Things like
>Have all voice lines recorded and ready for engine implementation by XX XX
>Have the story ready for review by XX XX
Solid, airtight things. What bethesda started adding was opinion based milestones, like the one that fucked them over
>Have shippable graphics by XX XX
The reason this is so bad is because "what is shippable". What ended up happening is they failed this milestone every time they presented it because bethesda kept saying "its not in shippable form"Eventually the money ran out. Zenimax stepped in and offered them 2 options. Go out of business and lose the IP to them by default, or let them loan them enough money to cover 6 months of pay to help them get to the milestone. They accepted because they had people to think about.
6 months passed and they failed the milestone. Zeni came back to them and said "You are now in debt and we're calling it in. You can either go bankrupt and we own the IP, studio and everyones out of a job, or you can sell to us for super cheap and stay in business". A week after the sale went through, the milestone was passed.
They did a similar trick with obsidian. When approached to making FONV, they offered them a contract that gave them 0% of the income from sales, but offered a set, guaranteed amount (over 2x what they would have got from the standard sale residuals) if they got a MC score of over 85. They accepted this. Bethesda then forced them to use the near final beta build of the FO3 engine (and not the greatly upgraded and far less buggy expansion engine, and even decided that if obsidian wanted to have the game play tested, they should have to pay for it (an extreme rarity as 99% of the time the publisher pays for it and handles it). Obsidian didnt have the money for that, so it was all internal testing.
When the game was released, it was a buggy fucking mess and bethesda, out of NOWHERE, decided to publicly go on this "fairness of review systems" hunt. They would contact a BUNCH of smaller review sites (not the IGN's and poly's, but the smaller review sites that metacritic allowed in. They threatened to withhold all ads from them if they didnt review fonv with the highest of standards. "Dont let it pass because its a fallout game and you love the franchise! if its buggy, HOLD THEM TO IT AND LOWER THE SCORE! NO ONE IS ABOVE THE SYSTEM" To the public, it seemed like bethesda was trying to make the game review world a better place. But reality was they where lowering the scores so they didnt have to pay obsidian. It ended up at 84 and obsidian never once saw a single dime for FONV. They also did the same exact thing that they did with arkane, but using Prey. HH, knowing what was coming, opted for bankrupcy
Le karma