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[VerTiGo]

http://www.gamersmark.com/news/2005/08/1/6452

Excerpt:

JoWooD regrets to be forced to cancel the development agreement with Perception, the Australian developer currently responsible for the Stargate-SG1: The Alliance license title.

"The title in its current form, initially scheduled for an October 2005 release, does satisfy neither our quality requirements nor the fans expectations. We will not release anything that does not do justice to this well known license" says Albert Seidl, CEO JoWooD Productions Software AG. "In recent months we have invested a lot of time and resources in helping Perception finish the development, but we now simply have lost confidence in their ability to finish this project in time and sufficient quality."

 

[DarienA]

f*ck f*ck f*ck... well if it was bad this is a good thing... but still...

 

[Sinatar]

Wow not often that a publisher will just publicly own a developer like that.

 

[Phoenix]

http://www.gamersmark.com/news/2005/08/1/6452

Excerpt:

JoWooD regrets to be forced to cancel the development agreement with Perception, the Australian developer currently responsible for the Stargate-SG1: The Alliance license title.

"The title in its current form, initially scheduled for an October 2005 release, does satisfy neither our quality requirements nor the fans expectations. We will not release anything that does not do justice to this well known license" says Albert Seidl, CEO JoWooD Productions Software AG. "In recent months we have invested a lot of time and resources in helping Perception finish the development, but we now simply have lost confidence in their ability to finish this project in time and sufficient quality."

Wow... that is harsh and damning to the core... good job! At least SOMEONE out there is unwilling to put out crap if they can prevent it.

 

[VerTiGo]

Wow... that is harsh and damning to the core... good job! At least SOMEONE out there is unwilling to put out crap if they can prevent it.

It's unfortunate EA can't do the same. Their DS efforts are horrendous.

 

[.hacked]

well fuck!

I was looking forwad to it.

 

[raYne]

I was looking forward to it too but, rock on JoWooD keep shitty games off the market!

Stargate for next-gen!

 

[ram]

what?

14 days ago, they released the first ps2 screens. first aquanox: angels tear and now stargate. whats up with jowood???

 

[CygnusXI]

Stargate = Awesome.

Heard the game was fps, so meh.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

The other day I was playing Metroid Prime and thinking that team could probably do a pretty good SG-1. Still quite unlikely, but several percent more possible than yesterday.

 

[Doogdogg]

Damn. I like this TV show a lot.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

And the public spat is in swing.

http://www.gateworld.net/news/2005/08/perceptionjowooddrawbattle.shtml

The developer is continuing work on the game and is pursuing legal action against publisher JoWooD Productions Software AG, which last week terminated the contract between the two companies (story).

"To be clear, Perception is the official licensee of MGM on Stargate SG-1: The Alliance," the company said. "Any suggestion that JoWooD has rights to Stargate SG-1: The Alliance upon termination of the contract is incorrect and not based on commercial or legal fact.

...

"JoWooD had to face the fact that the present technical status of the development makes a completion of the project by Perception within the contractually agreed time limit (end of August 2005) definitely impossible," JoWood said in a second statement on Friday. "This assessment is supported by an external expertise which confirms the severe defects in the areas of visualisation, animations, audio and light effects of the development project already brought up by JoWooD months ago. Three weeks ahead of the contractually planned target date the versions for the major platforms Playstation 2 as well as Xbox are extremely unstable and face severe performance issues."

Per JoWooD's reading of the contract, the publisher is pursuing financial compensation for its investment -- more than $6 million -- plus the unfinished game's code and assets. Perception will counter the demands by bringing legal action against its former partner and its CEO, Albert Seidl, for libel and the return of monies it claims it is owed.

 

[BirdySky]

Cool. Maybe now we'll get an Atlanstis game instead. Dr McKay would make a bad ass side kick/NPC.

 

[Rahul]

From Eurogamer via some SG1 forums:

Hello. I'm afraid I'm not a fan of the franchise, I just googled for the biggest Stargate fansite on the web. I'm a cost-analyst that works for JoWood; my job consists of working out how much a project will cost, then grovelling to management to try to get a large enough budget. First, let me bring you up to speed on JoWood. Anyone who's bought one of our games knows we make woefully inferior, poorly funded crap; with little to no support after the game comes out. The management are totally clueless, as in completely out to lunch. JoWood has fallen on hard times and are always on the lookout on ways to reduce costs (of course the idea of actually improving our games never occurred to them). Why am I slagging them off? Well I've just got a job offer from a much better company so to hell with them.

Do you know why SG:Alliance was really cancelled? It's because some poor simpleton signed a contract stating that should the project not meet our standards, we reserve the right to renege on the whole deal. What's more, they'd have to reimburse us for all the money we invested and release all the assets associated with the project (i.e. the game). We planned to renege on the contract from the beginning. Don't you see, we have the developer make us the game for nothing. Once the game reached a certain point in development we'd say it wasn't up to spec and now not only do they have to hand over the game, but the developer has to pay us for all the money we spent on it.

How do you justify what they did to Perception? They're a low-budget developer, now saddled with a million dollar debt. That's lives ruined, not to mention all the people who will probably lose their jobs.

 

[Frank]

^^

If this is true, it's damn harsh. And considering the track record of JoWood, it really doesn't seem unlikely.