Stardock alleges former marketing manager impaired Elemental: War of Magic's launch, files suit

from Elemental Forums

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/16/stardock-alleges-former-marketing-manager-impaired-elemental-wa/

 

There is obviously a lot of bad blood between the involved parties (the update indicates it's actually a sort of counter-lawsuit), and there will be more sides of this story. 

 

However, blaming a marketing director for the bad launch seems ridiculous to me. Everyone remembers that it was nearly unplayable out of the box, and though there were patches, the game never made it beyond "mediocre". I think there were swarms of people desperately wanting to love the game, marketing or not. The only thing to blame for the poor launch and sales should be the game quality.

25,712 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

If the game was bad or not really has no impact on the suit.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Heard about this a week or so ago. That was a very unprofessional way to leave a job. I hope she left to marry a doctor, it will be hard for her to find gainful employment at any reputable business.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Stardock does not allow discussion about their court cases on their forums, and I expect this topic to be closed. The frog closed the thread about Rebellion sueing for some name infringement thingie.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

If she did all those fucked up things, then she deserves to be sued, but to say that she was the cause of WoM horrid failure is fucking ridiculous.  

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

In a world that is so about money, even people from companies who do get around to saying sorry sorta try to blame it on something or someone or other.  Brad/Stardock has been better than most people, companies but he and it are not perfect.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

Locking. This is not the place for discussing pending litigation involving Stardock.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

People who post sensationalist conclusions should probably read the actual filing. If we wanted to blame the overall quality of the game all on an individual malicious employee, we could have done that 2 years ago and saved ourselves a lot of trouble in the repeated, public communications on what went wrong with that title.

On the other hand I don't know what to even say to someone who doesn't recognize the impact that a malicious employee in a management position could have in the final crunch weeks of a software development project.