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The heart of the damned.

In my mind, two issues are central to the compromised version of BGEE that was released and its current state of limbo.


1. Promises were made prematurely:
The original product was promoted promising an extensive 'overhaul' of the game to include reworking the graphical assets befitting high resolution display. This never happened. Easy online connectivity for multiplayer games was also promised. Thus never happened. It is my understanding that much of this was a result of being unable to recover the original assets from their grave on a server from which they were ultimately deleted.

if claims made are contingent on the existence of assets that were only presumed to be available the wise thing to have done would have been to wait until those assets were in hand before those promises were made.


2. Inadequate legal protection of distribution rights.
The current brick wall jeopardizing current and future development of BGEE is simply legal negligence. Beamdog simply should have had better legally binding protections of their right to develop and distribute BGEE. If they had entered into contracts more carefully and those contracts reflected and protected their intentions with BGEE adequately then there would be no legal way for the current dispute to happen in the first place.


There are a few people who could doubtlessly shed more light on the particulars of both those shortcomings in the product delivery chain and promises made but apart from additional illumination on those matters the two points seem obvious and avoidable.

Disclaimer: I am reasonably satisfied with the current incarnation of BGEE and was willing to lend my modest economic support to the project based on promises sight/unseen in the form of a pre-order. I do not regret buying it.

Comments

  • DurenasDurenas Member Posts: 508
    Name one place where they promised to rework the graphical assets. You won't be able to. They have said from the beginning that they do not have the source art material. There was a fire in Bioware offices some time back and a lot of stuff was lost, including the BG source art.
  • EdwinEdwin Member Posts: 480
    Edwin said:


    When a company files for bankruptcy under Chapter 11, as Atari has done, they are legally allowed to cancel contracts. There's nothing Beamdog can do to prevent this.

    While this is a gross simplification of bankruptcy law it does demonstrate the peril of an unnuanced understanding of legalese. I imagine the argument being played out in conversations with atari's lawyers right now is whether Beamdog's contract with them is a viable executory item. If they did allow their contract to be filed under this distinction (which varies depending on the district in which the contract was filed) without protection clauses then Beamdog's lawyers dropped the ball...particularly if there was any indication that atari was a distressed property beforehand (which their lawyers should have addressed as well).

    Chapter 11 isn't a 'get out of jail free card' if the contracts are carefully crafted and filed appropriately.
  • KaltzorKaltzor Member Posts: 1,050
    Edwin said:

    Easy online connectivity for multiplayer games was also promised. Thus never happened

    Unless I am mistaken, they WERE going to implement it with the next patch... But then stuff happened.
  • EdwinEdwin Member Posts: 480
    Amberion said:

    Name one place where they promised to rework the graphical assets. You won't be able to. They have said from the beginning that they do not have the source art material. There was a fire in Bioware offices some time back and a lot of stuff was lost, including the BG source art.

    It depends on what you call the beginning. I was enticed by this project when it was still called Baldurs Gate HD. If you can find any prominent instances where they walked that claim back prior to opening pre-orders about a year ago, ok. The other features that have yet to be realized were still explicitly and prominently featured as selling points weeks after release. And, as I said, even after all of this I am still proud of Overhaul's effort.

    What is clear if you find yourself researching this story, trying to figure out what obstacles led up to all of this, is that atari has been a thorn from beginning to (end?) or present date at any rate. Let us hope that the last selling point of "Ongoing Support" doesn't fall to the wayside consequently.
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    It was never called Baldur's Gate HD. The game was announced as "Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition", and from the very first discussions on the forums (as well as Trent's twitter feed), which for a while was the only place where any information was posted, Trent made it very clear that the art assets were lost and that the game would not be HD as planned. There was a lot of wailing on the forums about that, which you can go back and read if you like, but if you bought or preordered the game thinking it was going to be HD, that's the fault of rumors and ill-informed speculation. It was made very clear at the outset that the game's art assets were lost. I think that announcement was made only a week after the game itself was announced, last May.

    I won't comment on the rest, largely because the details of our contract have always been confidential.
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    Chapter 11 may not be a "Get out of jail free" card, but it is a hard fact that it is designed to help when financial obligations can no longer be met. You can stand on your high hill and scream to the heavens that it isn't fair and there is a contract to uphold (and we none of us have seen the contract to know what was in it or what was covered) but you can't force workers to continue working if there is no money to pay them. And so the people in charge of Atari, not having the skills necessary to complete the contract aren't going to be able to come up with more money to pay someone when they can't pay who they owe now.

    Secondly, it is all well and good to say that, in hind site, no one should have gotten in bed with Atari because they went bankrupt. Well, if we all had time machines, no one would. But companies have recovered from dire straits before. New cash flow can open opportunities. And doing business even with a healthy and thriving company doesn't guarantee that it will remain so. No one can predict the future.

    Hopefully there are clauses in the contract that Beamdog signed (and again we none of us consumers have seen it so we don't know) that they are able to leverage. It sounds indeed like there are as otherwise they would have merely closed the doors and been done. But that isn't something they care to comment on publicly, so we have only speculation.

    Being critical and negative without all of the facts isn't helping anything. People are frustrated. From what has been posted, it sounds like the good folks at Beamdog not the least of them. Hopefully this will get favorably resolved. If not, no amount of hate or blame directed at Beamdog is going to make it any better or any faster.

    All in my own personal opinion.
  • sledgefangsledgefang Member Posts: 42
    Wow. This forum is made up of Sherlock Holmes, or at least lawyers. I love begets and overhaul did the best they could with what they had. My only question is, why the hell does atari even have the rights to this game In the first place? What happened to wizards of the coast and bioware and black isles studios originally that they
    Lost the rights to this game?
  • sledgefangsledgefang Member Posts: 42
    I mean bgee not begets stupid ipad
  • EdwinEdwin Member Posts: 480

    I mean bgee not begets stupid ipad

    LOL... Something in me was hoping the use of Middle English was intentional.
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    Even Atari U.S. didn't know they were going to file for bankruptcy. Even if Beamdog asked them (which would of been hysterical, a tiny start up asking a behemoth of a company if THEY had a chance of filing for bankruptcy in the next year), Atari U.S. would of informed them that they were strong financially. It was Atari U.S.'s parent company that got squeezed into bankruptcy and took everything down with it.
  • EdwinEdwin Member Posts: 480
    deltago said:

    Even Atari U.S. didn't know they were going to file for bankruptcy. Even if Beamdog asked them (which would of been hysterical, a tiny start up asking a behemoth of a company if THEY had a chance of filing for bankruptcy in the next year), Atari U.S. would of informed them that they were strong financially. It was Atari U.S.'s parent company that got squeezed into bankruptcy and took everything down with it.

    I was aware of this but assumed atari was insolvent as well. If they are in fact solvent, then the maneuver to cut out Beamdog is even more disturbing...some sorta power play.
  • VishnuVishnu Member Posts: 66
    edited June 2013
    Edwin said:

    I mean bgee not begets stupid ipad

    LOL... Something in me was hoping the use of Middle English was intentional.
    And I had no idea what "begets" was...

    (typically of a man, sometimes of a man and a woman) Bring (a child) into existence by the process of reproduction.

    ...so his quote is even better.

    Wow. This forum is made up of Sherlock Holmes, or at least lawyers. I love begets and overhaul did the best they could with what they had.

    Yes, totally unrelated to the thread, but there's little else to say. All this Atari thing has been a mess for all parts involved, but that's how it usually goes.
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