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Hasbro, Atari Roll For Initiative In D&D Legal Battle
Dungeons & Dragons has a long video game history, and many of the franchise's most popular titles have been released by Atari. However, the publisher's stewardship of the D&D license may be in jeopardy now that Hasbro is suing Atari over the brand.
According to the complaint, Atari entered into a sublicensing agreement with Namco Bandai, which Hasbro alleges is a breach of contract. In a statement, Hasbro said: “Dungeons & Dragons is owned by Hasbro's wholly-owned subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, who discovered earlier this year that Atari may have entered into an unauthorized sublicensing relationship with Namco Bandai Partners (NBP) for the Dungeons & Dragons digital game rights.”
In a response issued to IGN, Atari claims that it sought to resolve the matter with Hasbro, and that the suit is "an apparent attempt to unfairly take back rights granted to Atari."
This isn't the first time Atari has faced some D&D-related legal trouble. Back in August, Turbine Entertainment (developer of Dungeons & Dragons Online) sued the publisher, alleging that Atari "acted unreasonably in its efforts to promote and distribute [D&D Online] and failed to devote the necessary resources to it."
While the legal intricacies of the situation are difficult to predict, we'll admit that the prospect of a D&D custody change could reinvigorate the franchise in the gaming world. While Turbine's D&D Online has been doing well since it adopted a free-to-play model, the last good D&D game before that was Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone...in 2004.
With all of the skilled RPG developers in the industry, do you think the D&D is still relevant to video games? Or are gamers better off with original rulesets like those seen in Fallout 3 and Dragon Age: Origins?
[Via Edge]
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