Anonymous blogger claims Gearbox stole money from Sega

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So have you heard about this new game, Aliens: Colonial Marines? Apparently, some people are pretty upset about it. So much so that no one cares about the game’s quality anymore, and instead the topic has turned into a ridiculous soap opera/Judge Judy lovechild…. thing.

Oh but I jest! More fuel for the fire has arrived from a certain Sega employee, “Bryan Danielson,” on his blog entitled Sega Awakens (which has been taken down since this posting). Danielson has been using said pseudo name on his blog for some time to give light on things going on behind Sega’s closes doors. Hit the jump to hear how Gearbox may have been using Sega’s money for ACM to fund 3 different projects outside of Colonial Marines.

Danielson’s blog has made it’s way onto multiple sites and forums prior to it disappearing from the internet. In this blog, Danielson was claimed that the stories circulating ACM were, “99 percent true,” regarding the distribution to TimeGate, the Wii U version being horrible, and Gearbox ignoring ACM to work on other projects.

Normally, I would sum up the blog, and post a link for you to read it in its entirety, but since there is no blog to read I will post a large amount of quotes from it, taken from the many sites who already quoted the blog. Prepare yourselves, it’s a doozy. The blog itself was pointing out the flaws of the three companies in charge: TimeGate, Sega, and of course, Gearbox. It really sounds like no one made any good decisions for the game, which is baffling. So here we go…

TimeGate is at fault for: Wanting to even take on this project and their shoddy work. Granted, I heard about their claims about Gearbox having full creative control, but they should have tried to show their side of the argument and fight more if they had problems with Gearbox’s creative control and creative direction.

Honestly, I thought they should have risked some arguments and the possibility of losing the contract, if they had problems with the project like the Reddit poster said. However, there still is a chance of their claims being a lie or a half truth, but as I said above, TimeGate has some responsibility.

Next up to bat in the blog was Sega:

SEGA is at fault for: Announcing the project in 2007 when no work was done at all. In my views, a game project should be announced publicly when it is 50-60% done, so you won’t have to wait 6 years for a game that turns out to be shit. SEGA is also responsible for not permanently cancelling the game in 2008. I don’t know who found out about the mishandling of funds by Gearbox, but canceling Colonial Marines had to be one of the few right decisions the board has done, or this person is one of the few board members who knew what they were doing (from what I heard, this person may have left the board a while ago when SEGA decided to start the project again). This game should have been cancelled permanently, and the final product is undeniable proof of it.

Despite that, I believe SEGA wanted to try to get some of the money back, at the fans’ expense.  So another blame for SEGA there. SEGA should have also watched the project and development a lot better, because there was a lot of warning signs that said this was a disaster in the making. So whoever was assigned to watch Gearbox and the game has some responsibility too, unless the board was forcing him to do it. SEGA and their lawyers also have some blame on the wording of the contract too, but more on that later.

And then finally, we get to the meat of the blog, with Gearbox at the helm:

Gearbox stole from SEGA, they robbed us, lied to us about the game, and tried to get another company to make the game instead. Pitchford and Gearbox wanted to focus heavily on Duke Nukem Forever, but how would they get the money to hire some of the 3D Realms team and even buy the intellectual property? Sure, they made a lot from Borderlands, but guess where they got the money to fund Borderlands in the first place? Yup, SEGA.

So Gearbox essentially lied to SEGA, mishandled funds, broke agreements and contractual obligations to work on other projects, didn’t want to work on a game they were contractually obligated to work on and gave it to another team, poor organization and direction on ACM, took on too many projects from different companies at once, and other things that we may not even know about. Hell, part of me believes that Gearbox wanted this thing delayed as much as possible so they can get more funding money to embezzle from SEGA.

The blog went on to say that the game should have been cancelled permanently for other reasons, and that Sega should even receive some money from the success of Borderlands 1 and 2 since it sounds like they indirectly funded both projects. All of this has become such a ridiculous story that I almost wish the game was pushed back another year to prevent all this, if that was even possible.

What do you think, fellow Addicts?

[Source: VG 24/7 via Destructoid]

Readers Comments (2)

  1. Never really mentioned the wording of the contract, but if Sega can, they should sue Gearbox into oblivion. Bankrupt there ass’s.

  2. Hmm horrible horrible and sadly this is typical Sega, not to take any blame from the other idiots but what the anon poster said, sacrificing their own costumer for a quick box comes as no surprise… such short term thinking is rampant at SOA. Sacrificing the brand is the last thing you EVER want to do and yet they are quick to do it NUMEROUS times.

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