Frontier Suing Atari for $2.2 Million in Unpaid Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Royalties

ffronw

I am a meat popsicle
Oct 24, 2013
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Frontier Suing Atari for $2.2 Million in Unpaid Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Royalties

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1371/1371310.jpgThe devs behind Elite: Dangerous and Planet Coaster are suing Atari for royalties owed for Roller Coaster Tycoon 3.

Frontier Developments has put itself into the limelight of late, thanks to the success it has had with Elite: Dangerous and Planet Coaster, but the developer has been around a lot longer than that. It's been developing theme park games for over a decade, including creating the two Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 expansions and Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 for Atari.

It's that latter title that's back in the news today, as Frontier has filed a lawsuit against Atari over the game. According to TMZ [http://www.tmz.com/2017/01/03/atari-video-game-royalties-lawsuit/], the suit alleges that the publisher owes Frontier roughly $2.2 million in royalties for RCT 3.

After Atari went bankrupt back in 2013 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121617-Atari-Inc-Files-for-Bankruptcy], Frontier says it amended its contract and stayed on. Now that Atari is back in better financial condition, Frontier's been looking at the numbers and it doesn't think it's gotten the royalties it deserves for RCT 3. After seeing some sales figures online that didn't match up with what they were seeing from Atari. According to the TMZ story, Frontier felt it was owed $3.37 million in royalties, but had only received $1.17 million.

The developer asked Atari for an audit of their sales report, which Frontier says the company delayed. This led to the filing of the lawsuit. Frontier chief operating officer David Walsh spoke to Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-03-planet-coaster-dev-frontier-sues-rollercoaster-tycoon-world-maker-atari] about the suit, saying,

"We can confirm Frontier is currently pursuing a complaint against Atari. We have attempted to resolve this issue without legal action since April 2016. We have so far been denied our contractual right to audit by Atari, and we are unfortunately left with no other way to resolve our concerns. We are unable to offer any further comment while the matter is subject to due legal process."

Obviously, this suit is in the preliminary stages, and there's likely to be no resolution in the near future. We'll keep an eye on the story, and keep you updated with any developments.

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RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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ffronw said:
According to the TMZ story, Frontier felt it was owed $3.37 million in royalties, but had only received
Oooooo! I like fill-in-the-blank articles! Let's see...carry the one...think that should be about $1.17 million, am I right? :D
 

Callate

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Dec 5, 2008
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Unfortunately, I can believe it. Atari seems to have been woefully mis-managed of late; I can definitely imagine them hoping an owed royalty or two on one of their few properties to have a measure of success would be quietly overlooked.
 

ffronw

I am a meat popsicle
Oct 24, 2013
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RJ 17 said:
ffronw said:
According to the TMZ story, Frontier felt it was owed $3.37 million in royalties, but had only received
Oooooo! I like fill-in-the-blank articles! Let's see...carry the one...think that should be about $1.17 million, am I right? :D
Stupid rogue tag has been hunted down and killed with fire. Thanks for the heads up.
 

fix-the-spade

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Feb 25, 2008
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Well, I hope the Davids Walsh and Braben are right and that they give Atari a big financial boot up the arse.

That's all Atari is good for these days anyway.
 

gigastar

Insert one-liner here.
Sep 13, 2010
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Can we stop pretending that this is actually Atari and not its rotten carcass being puppeteered by the rats that jumped ship from Infogrames?

That said, hope it goes through. Infogrames needs to die.
 

Dr.Awkward

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Mar 27, 2013
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While the $2.20 million sounds nice, I feel like Frontier could do the industry a favor and instead just demand the Atari IP and its owned IPs instead, then give Atari the proper burial it's been needing for nearly the last decade.
 

sagitel

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Feb 25, 2012
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The Rogue Wolf said:
Like others, I remain amazed that Atari is still an actual entity at this point. Don't we shoot zombies in this town?
you have to shoot them in the head. they shot atari once but it wasnt enough