Report: Playstation exclusive "Wild" has finally been cancelled, 7 years after it was announced

[Rafie]

shikamaru317 said:

JRPGfan said:

Did sony pay them to make this? if so, do they get money back, from people just dumping the project?
I feel like in other places of work, if you paid for something, and someone given the project just went "we wont bother, we failed", the end result would be a law suit.
What happends with games that get dropped like this?

I very much doubt that when a publisher pays a developer to make a game like this, and then the game is canceled, that they get any money back. That money they paid is gone, spent to pay for the salaries of the developers at the the studio they contracted, spent on paying actors for voice acting, etc., a studio can't produce money out of thin air to pay back a publisher. Maybe if there is something left of the initial payment it would be returned, but most publisher send developers smaller payments monthly, rather than giving them a huge lump sum payment at the beginning of development.

Now maybe if it's a case of a studio grifting a publisher for a project, then never actually developing it, with the studio head pocketing the money, maybe then the publisher could sue in an attempt to get their money back, but they would need proof that the studio head funneled the money into a private account, instead of spending the money on the game and the salaries of the developers in his studio. 

This game has been in development for 7 years, anything that Sony paid them will have been spent to pay the salaries of the 40+ devs at the studio over the last 7 years. If the average salary at the studio is say $60,000, that comes out to $420,000 per year per developer, with 40+ developers at Wild Sheep that is over $16m they will have spent on the salaries of the developers alone. How much of that $16m+ will have been paid by Sony, and how much will have been paid by 3rd party investments that Michel Ancel managed to secure, I don't know. 

Even with all of that. Sony ain't just giving money away to pay for salaries and such. Something has to come out of it, or I would suspect a lawsuit of some sort will be imminent. Paying for a service that wasn't delivered, for whatever reason, should be compensated.