I remember Fat Hippo and I tracking similar occurrences. They agree more than you'd thinkDalisclock said:
OT: Am I remembering this correctly? I thought the original deal was for a Witcher trilogy of games. If so, is this just a negotiating tactic?
The $16 million drama between CDPR and Andrzej Sapkowski (and stubborn gaming industry stigmas)
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
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OT: Am I remembering this correctly? I thought the original deal was for a Witcher trilogy of games. If so, is this just a negotiating tactic?
It's difficult to feel any sympathy for the guy when he's consistently proving himself to be a bit of an asshole. But then, CDPR has had a looming uneasy cloud of "maybe not so 'too pure for this world' after all" hanging over them for a while now. Am not sure I feel inclined to defend either, so maybe best to hang back and see where this all goes I guess.
No amount of legal wizardry will get him the money. They offered him a percentage of the sales initially and he declined. He wanted money right away. As to why that is, I can't say. But he's not entitled to anything more than what's in the contract. Besides, if not for video games, his books would have remained largely unknown to the rest of the world and his Netflix deal would never have happened. The fact that he can't appreciate those things speaks volumes about the guy. But what the hell, writers aren't perfect people. For example, Dostoevsky was a degenerate gambler.
He was a philosopher .... what else is he going to do with the money? Heroin wouldn't be available for 10 more years after he penned Crime and Punishment, after all.Adam Jensen said:
He would routinely lose money on gambling that was supposed to last him for everyday expenses. Then he'd write neat letters to his wife explaining how he lost the money and then asking for more. You can buy these letters in book form. They're kinda hilarious.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Holy hell you?re right. [https://www.reddit.com/r/JimSterling/comments/7tsy9o/43_cd_projekt_red_developers_speak_out_about/] Surprising this hasn?t gotten more coverage in the age of whistleblowing.
By contrast, what?s perhaps more surprising is how a big ?soulless? corporation like Sony has thus far maintained a comparably healthy ecosystem in terms of its more prominent first party developers. At least, when viewed through an interweb looking glass.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Naughty-Dog-EI_IE134488.11,22.htm
https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Santa-Monica-Studio-EI_IE716413.11,30.htm
https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Guerrilla-Games-EI_IE429325.11,26.htm
Having said that, it?d of course be naive to think everyone?s experiences are peachy in such a demanding, competitive and often cutthroat industry (and all in the name of entertainment). There are probably horror stories wherever one goes.
Kinda surprised at some of the comments in this thread. Posters who are normally always looking out for the little guy are like f*ck him... I hope that motherf*cker dies penniless in a gutter! Ha.
He asked for $16M, and it will probably settle for like $1-2M. That's how these things usually work. And I don't see anything wrong with that. It's the right thing to do, IMO. Sapkowski made a huge mistake, and he admits that. CD Projekt won the lottery off of that deal, against all odds, and lot of shareholders have gotten rich and continue to get richer off of his characters and story. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for them to throw the guy a bone as a thank you.
He asked for $16M, and it will probably settle for like $1-2M. That's how these things usually work. And I don't see anything wrong with that. It's the right thing to do, IMO. Sapkowski made a huge mistake, and he admits that. CD Projekt won the lottery off of that deal, against all odds, and lot of shareholders have gotten rich and continue to get richer off of his characters and story. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for them to throw the guy a bone as a thank you.
A part of the issue seems to be that CDPR tried that before, even after the initial cash offer, but he refused to accept anything and went out of his way to insult them. He had his chance and he?s right to admit he was stupid to dismiss their ambitions as essentially hopeless and foolish. If he had an ounce of faith and anything approaching an open mind or at least a better attitude then maybe he would?ve agreed to terms more in his favor. He just simply didn?t care at the time, so too bad, so sad that it took CDPR?s current level of success to change his mind.Kerg3927 said:
If I could reverse my business decisions the same way he wants to, right now I'd be the owner of the Trump Tower (I'd had it renamed to CaitSeith Tower, and then renamed to something better because that was also a very bad business decision).Kerg3927 said:
It's like suing the Lotto because you had chosen the winning number but changed your mind and bought a Scratch & Win instead.
Ehhh ... it's not surprising to me, or likely most others who are trans. When I was first transitioning, you basically aimed at trying to get in with larger corporate, or public sector, work precisely because they were often the only institutions that went out of their way to make a nicr workplace environment precisely in order to accss the largest possible talent pool. And the thing is you can't really go anywhere else if you want to be treated as a human being so they get a longterm employee they merely have to pretend to treat with respect because what else are you going to do?hanselthecaretaker said:
It's not so bad in Australia where they can't just fire you for being trans ... but that's a thing that's 'on paper', but no such luck in countries like the U.S. where you can be fired precisely solely due to being trans. The fact of the matter is that all corporations are soulless entities. Because it's not like any entry level worker is ever going to get their own productivity back.
The reason why corporations rallied to pressure North Carolina reps after their blatantly transphobic activities is preisely because they havea vested interest in growing their total accessible talent pool. All while being able to say to their trans employees; "If you have a problem with that, you're free to be treated like garbage elsewhere... so I doubt we'll be hearing any complaints from you, right?"
The industries that constantly rely on 'crunch time', the exploitation is obviously at their worst.
How? For starters, since when did creative ownership base itself in the idea of the sentiments of the owner? Moreover, what exactly has CDPR done to jeopardize an idea of IP creation still being someone's creation?CaitSeith said:
How exatly does this relate to Trump Tower?
Given Witcher 3 is the only real runaway success of the franchise, why exactly was the author wrong? After all, the Witcher 1 was kind of garbage. So ... what exactly was he wrong about? If I was an author and only had the first game as the basis judgment of whether CDPR was going to achieve anything substantial with the franchise, why does it magically preclude that any derision on my part was unmerited?
Moreover, why the fuck cwould my antipathy to your efforts preclude no real creative rights to my own work and its affiliations?
Your example doesn't work... if I start a business, and someone offers to run a branch of its operations and I am wholly derisive of your efforts save for one instance of its success ... why exactly was my erision unmerited, and why exactly shouldn't that person at least recognize they are beholden to good will to its parent property?
The guy is an author, knows fuck all about games ... the author admitted their ignorance, and even then I think he's being charitable given how his property has been treated in the past ... seems petty to pretend that they should then expect to be voided any of his property's success just because of an anomaly outlier of performance.
He deserves a substantial cut as per his rights, regardless of his sentiments.
Stan Lee treated Rob Liefeld with public derision as well. On tv no less. Publicly airing his grievances ... I mean, sure... kind of a dick move given you effectively invited this person onto your show under false pretenses, particularly when arguably (and controversially) Rob Liefeld was incredibly prolific and did end up being a major creative element that help promote a lot of Marvel into its early days of mass consumer awareness after a deathly slump of the 80s ... but that's neither here nor there.
Ah, I don't know all of the backstory of the dispute.hanselthecaretaker said:
I would argue that his lack of faith in the project, by this little rinky dink wannabe startup developer, was not unfounded. Read the development history from Wikipedia. They didn't even have a studio or have any experience developing video games at the time they acquired the rights. I probably would have taken the upfront cash, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Projekt#Game_development
What CDPR grew into from those lowly beginnings is nothing short of remarkable. It was a extreme longshot. And I would argue that the main reason it succeeded against all odds was the quality of the story and the characters they were able to acquire. The gameplay in those games is not that great and not what made them successful, IMO. It was Sapkowski's characters and world that made them cool, and it's what made them sell.
There really isn't. Its a whole lot of sound and fury symbolizing nothing. He doesn't seem to have a legal leg to stand on. I can't imagine this won't get thrown out in the first hearing.Kyle Gaddo said:
I get your general point about decisions having harsh consequences. But they made $300 million profit off of his work. Wouldn't hurt to throw the guy $1-2M as a thank you. CDPR would be nothing today if they hadn't been very fortunate in acquiring that story.CaitSeith said:
We may never know the outcome, because the deal reached may be kept confidential, but I bet they are able to reach an agreement that makes both sides happy. And sometimes you have to get lawyers involved to bring people to the table to work things out.
Lawyers will take a third or more of that, though. It would have been nice if this was solved in mediation. Which would have been the most quiet and most prompt (and cheapest for the plaintiff) way to solve this, so it's any question how long this goes on for. Lawyers have no reason not to press for the highest damages award, for this reason. They'll write it off as getting the bestresult for their client ... but in truth that's not out of respects to the plaintiff's wishes.Kerg3927 said:
In a better world, yeah ... quietly CDPR would just write over some form of royalties and cover legal fees of attesting a contractual agreement for a smaller total amount with incremental payments as best suited to taxation purposes and desires of the recipient for their award.
But the reason why you get demands for exorbitant gross total settlements is precisely because of lawyers.
It's the paradox of being awarded a settlement. The bigger the settlement demands, the more the law firm gets, which means the longer in deliberation, which means the larger the caseload, which results inthe greater number of legal assets afforded in respects to the amount the law firm can hope to gain/not lose ...
Starting to see the problem here?
When you have to resort to lawyers is when everybioy ends up somehow more out of pocket and somehow less than zero sum in some way. Then again, chalk it up as a failure of the human creature that we can't, just as human beings, go into a civil mediation agreement where we can be reasonable entities desiring a prompt, reasonable result.
We live in a world where there are Gina Rineharts that will sue their own children over the inheritance of the death of a family member.
As they say, God's away on business.
Neither him or CDPR could had predicted the success of the series. Successful sequels are anomalies (that's why when there is one, publishers cling to them as hard as they can). CDPR's monetary risk of making the sequel was increased because the author decided to get his cut early (instead of getting payed by royalties as he was offered). The author chose not to leave the money on the table; CDPR did.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
PS:
If I could legally claim all the money I didn't make from all the business risks I didn't take, I'd be so filthy rich I could buy any damn building in the World.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Yeah, it sucks but this is the deal he bargained for at the time. Secondly, the games succeeded a lot on their own merits (not really my jam, but I can see why others like it) probably more than on the licence which to my knowledge was mostly known in Poland at the time. He also has been acting kind of like a jackass about it in the past it seems. I don't know Polish law on the matter. He may get some money, but I would understand if he didn't. One thing I will defend him on: had I written a book and somebody offered me to make a tie-in game, I would not expect it to be good because lets be honest, a lot of tie-in games suck. Not all of them, but probably most of them. So I kind of get why he went for cash up front at the time. That needn't be a sign that he doesn't take games seriously.
While I do have some instinct that tells me to side against the large corporation (which CDPR is) in this case the little guy appears to be just plain unreasonable.Kerg3927 said:
And? Sorry, some games were trash. The first one particularly so. It's god-awful to play. As people keep reminding me, the only reason to play Witcher I is precisely for the charaters and narrative. CDPR paid the person peanuts to use their IP to begin with and any retroactive successes does not mean you simply own a controlling interest of that creative patronage. Gethsemani pointed to Polish law in this regards elsewhere.CaitSeith said:
He didn't sacrifice all rights to his product and its lateral monetization simply by refusing money. That'd be fucked up... in the same way I might turn down some two bit studio forking over money forthe usage of my IP in one instance does not mean it gets free reign to use it later and not expect to pay a dime yet again.
Whether CDPR like it or not, the performance (both in sales and in quality) of the first Witcher game they made is shockingly bad. If I was an author in this instane of a company uing my IP I'd shrug my shoulders and say; "Hey, you're giving me free press ... I mean it's not great press, but it's press ... and you probably need the money more than I do."
Clearly not the case with Witcher 3.
I'm sorry ... since when did risk determine validity of ownership and creative patronage? I'm an investor, I live by my investments on the market. I make sure a great number of my assets are blue-chip and gilt-edged. Not all, I have a marginal percentage of my available capital I have deigned to my stock broker as acceptable for high risk investment under advisement from my brokerage account after div yields.If I could legally claim all the money I didn't make from all the business risks I didn't take, I'd be so filthy rich I could buy any damn building in the World.
Do I legitimately believe I have a significant interest to manage those firms? Should I? After all, I'm taking on significant risk...