Slashdot Mirror
Ion Storm To Finish Thief III?
Lumpish Scholar writes: "Slashdot already reported Looking Glass Studios (creators of Thief, Thief II, and other games) declared bankruptcy. The irony was, their publisher, Eidos Interactive, was pumping all their money into Ion Storm's effort to finish Daikatana. Now, according to this story in Salon, Eidos has bought the rights to Thief III (presumably an asset when Looking Glass was dissolved) and has handed the work over to Ion Storm (under the helm of Warren Spector, not Daikatana's John Romero). Small world, innit?" Wow, that's cool. This should happen more often, I think.
I don't think the problem is that Ion Storm is making the sequel, but that Eidos turned their back on Looking Glass when they needed help, only to buy the rights at a yardsale.
I don't think Ion Storm did anything wrong in this situation, Eidos did. That's what I'm upset about, and what I think the original commenter is upset about. Ion Storm was duing what it was supposed (well, maybe not Romero's team), Eidos cheated looking glass.
Perhaps Eidos thought that it was doing its job in throwing its weight behind the much-hyped game, much as record labels throw their support behind the hottest artists. Perhpas it didn't think LG's titles would sell? Well, they bought the rights to it (and we saw what happened to Daikatana). . .
Wow, that's cool. This should happen more often, I think.
Looking Glass Studios was tricked, raped, pillaged, and salvaged by Eidos. Eidos made an initial proposal to fund LGS through it's projects, but there were a few projects it was not interested in. So instead of 'wasting' their money on side projects, when all they wanted was the money-maker Thief, they devised a plan.
LGS knew they needed to be bought out, and went off and started hitting up all the major publishers who would be interested. They hit up Eidos, and Eidos made them a deal, and in such a way that LGS gave up on searching for more money, confident that Eidos would pull through for them. At that point, Eidos just sat back and waited, not sending any checks. Shortly after, LGS went bankrupt, that much we know, because of Eidos not funding them as they should.
Now what do you see happening? Looking Glass Studios was auctioned off by it's creditors to pay the bills. The vulture Eidos then came in and bought up projects that they wanted, at cut-rate prices. Much less than they would have paid in the first place.
This is a highly unethical, unsuitable business practice, but it occurs many times, and makes me sick to my teeth.
Yes, I'm happy that Thief 3 is being finished. But, I didn't want to lose my favorite company in the process, because Eidos was money-hungry.
Hmmm,
Good developer makes great game and goes out of business because bad developer with big ego gets all publishers money and makes crap.
Yea, I can see why this should happen more often....NOT!
-g
As much as we all want to believe that Eidos sinking money into Ion instead of LGlass caused the latter's death, it simply isn't so.
Salon has an earlier article where Geoff Keighley points out the basic truth: "Looking Glass folded because it wasn't making money".
We all want brilliant games like Tthief and System Shock to make millions, but they don't. Games like Soldier of Fortune and Who Wants to be a Millionare do.
While Eidos didn't help Looking Glass as much as they probably could have, it didn't make economic sense for them to keep a studio whose games were low to negative profit ventures. (I'm not saying sinking $30 million into Daikatana was, but Eidos bad decisions are the reason they themselves are in financial difficulty now.)
Basically, it comes down to this: We can't blame Ion Storm for Looking Glass' demise. (although they may contribute to the possible death of Eidos) We can only blame a market where Barbie Fashion Designer and Bland Genre Clone® are the only things to make large profits.
Intolerant people should be shot.