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Harmonix Shareholders Sue Viacom

[Dec 21, 2010, 11:53 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

Gamasutra has word that a group of former shareholders of developer Harmonix (Rock Band) filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court last week against parent company Viacom accusing them of attempts to get out of paying performance-based bonuses. The suit accuses Viacom, who are looking to sell Harmonix, of manipulating distribution costs to reduce bonus payouts. Word is they: "decided to forego the opportunity to reduce EA’s distribution fees during 2008 (or in any other way enhance Harmonix’s net income or Gross Profit for 2008), and instead demanded benefits for itself (rather than Harmonix) in exchange for allowing EA to continue distributing Rock Band." The suit goes on to say: "Although a reduced 2008 EA distribution fee would have increased Harmonix's gross profit and operating profits in 2008, Viacom realized that every $1.00 of distribution fees that Harmonix saved during 2008 would require Viacom to pay an additional $3.50 of earn-outs to the [ex-shareholders]."

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Re: Harmonix Shareholders Sue Viacom

Dec 21, 2010, 15:30

Steele Johnson

nin wrote on Dec 21, 2010, 14:03: If they stayed focused on making music "games" and didn't waste all their money on their music creation network and music tutoring software, they'd probably be doing very well right now. Except that the whole music game genre crashed this year... I don't think you can simply say that it "crashed". People who love the genre are disappointed in the direction the developers took. Rock Band 3 had so much potential, but the developers clearly took the wrong path. The game could have been much better if they made the actual gameplay more fun rather than turning it into tutoring software and keeping the same ol' features of the previous versions. They added nothing to make gameplay more fun. Increasing the difficulty and adding new songs is not the path they should have taken.

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