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id Turns Down Activision, Gets Sued

Posted by Zonk on from the legal-snipers dept.

Gamespot is reporting on an article from the WSJ, stating that id software turned down a takeover bid by Activision earlier this year. Former employee Adrian Carmack, who was let go around that time, now states that his termination from the company was the result of a subtle ousting by the other owners. From the article: "... it is Carmack's contention that the other id owners deliberately rejected all of Activision's offers so they could then fire him, thereby acquiring his shares for a fraction of what the publisher would have paid for them. He claims that his fellow co-owners, which control a combined 59 percent of id, began a death-of-a-1,000-cuts-style approach to force him out--closely monitoring his hours, stripping him of privileges, and denying him access to board-related documents. The other board members also ceased redistributing profits as dividends in 2004 (for the five years prior to that, Carmack had received approximately $3.5 million per year)." Coverage also available from Gamasutra.

3 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Employee? Part-owner is more appropriate! by the+morgawr · · Score: 4, Interesting
    He's under contract to sell back his shares if he is ever fired. He claims the other owners refused the offer so that they would have time to fire him, forcing him to sell his shares at a lower price to them and netting the remaining owners more money when they sell.

    It's equally possible that this is a fued over whether they should sell. After all, activision did low-ball the buy out price of the company. AC may have upset the other owners by being eager to accept the activision offer.

    --
    The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
  2. Re:Doom3 by the+morgawr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Good point. Esp. since they are having another company do that art and game design for Quake4. It may be that they decided to take Gabe's advice and just focus on engine design....

    --
    The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
  3. Re:Democracy at work by ivan256 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Uh. The 41% was one guy, and the 59% was 5 guys. This one guy was taking home 41% of the cash while the other people (who probably worked just as hard for it) had to split the remaining 59% five ways... And it seems like they didn't even have a problem with it until he tried to cash out at massive profit for himself and massive profit divided by five for everybody else.

    Did he think they'd send him a fruit basket for that?

    If you started a company with five other guys, and one of them was taking home $3.5 mil in profits every year, while you only got $300k, what would you be thinking?