A very long-awaited news line comes to a close today: Atari and Hasbro have settled their lawsuit and Atari has come out the loser in the deal. As announced on Gamespot today, Hasbro is regaining full rights to the digital licensing from Atari, meaning Atari will no longer be able to license Dungeons and Dragons games. As part of the settlement, Atari will still be able to sell and develop a selection of D&D games, from Daggerdale to an upcoming Facebook game.
Neverwinter is the other half of the lawsuit, especially considering the sale of Cryptic Studios to Perfect World Entertainment left a lot of questions unanswered. Did the game transfer with Cryptic? If not, who would develop it? Neverwinter now carries a “late 2012” release date, attributed to Perfect World Entertainment’s desire to invest in a more immersive experience.
The year delay hopefully signals that Perfect World Entertainment won’t be tolerating Cryptic’s habit of game development: Short development cycles that produced products that ultimately lack content and polish. With legal issues out of the way, hopefully development of Neverwinter can resume to its full extent.
MMO Fallout 