Activision Bungie contract unsealed in Call of Duty case

[Zim]

I am so scared of everything about this.

Bungie were/are one of, if not the, best developers around. Their attitude to the community, bungie.net, theatre in 3/reach, the insane amount of content in reach etc etc was basically unparalleled. Most companies making FPS games are still trying to play catch up and haven't even managed it.

Now they are being published by Activision who I think could run anything into the ground. With a contract that seems utterly disastrous. One game ever other year in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019? With expansions every other year in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020? That is a ridiculous work schedule. And a MASSIVE increase in the amount of work compared to what they did on Halo. I mean in 2 years are they really going to be able to manage a comparable amount of content to the Halo games?

Not only this but I think that contract shows how bad publishers really do screw developers over. Keeping in mind that Bungie are one of the most well known and powerful developers look at what was presumably the best contract they could get.

A bonus of $2.5m if it achieves a GR rating of over 90%. That's a pretty small bonus for years of work to a company with 200 employees, and only IF it gets amazing reviews. 89%? No bonus.

Bungie will get 20-35% of operating income in royalties..... this seems very good however already I know EXACTLY what is going to happen. Hollywood math. Activision will simply plump up the numbers for costs.

Not only all this but Activision can simply immediately cancel the contract with no problems if it doesn't manage 5million units in 6 months... that is a truly huge order for a brand new ip. I'm pretty sure gears of war didn't manage that, and I know uncharted didn't.

I guess the real big thing is that Bungie has the rights to it's own IP and assuming activision doesn't screw them over too bad then the % of income could be huge. However I'm still surprised at just how easy it is for the deal to go sour on them.