SEGA and Gearbox have now responded to yesterday’s news of a class-action lawsuit being brought against them for false advertising over Aliens: Colonial Marines.

Gearbox’s comment says that “Attempting to wring a class action lawsuit out of a demonstration is beyond meritless.”

“We continue to support the game, and will defend the rights of entertainers to share their works-in-progress without fear of frivolous litigation.”

Meanwhile, SEGA’s own statement is somewhat less combative, but says: “SEGA cannot comment on specifics of ongoing litigation, but we are confident that the lawsuit is without merit and we will defend it vigorously.”

Source: IGN via llllTrooperllll

SEGA have moved to share their RTS strengths, appointing Creative Assembly director Tim Heaton as the interim General Manager over at their newly-acquired Relic studio.

“We are currently looking for a full-time general manager at Relic, so my role in this phase is to keep the studio focused on delivering COH2, to find the necessary staff to take Relic into the future and to ease the transition,” Heaton said to CVG.

“Sega bought Relic because they could see the staffs’ depth of ability and knowledge in the PC strategy space. The studio has had a tough time in the past few years with a publisher struggling to support them, but it’s a testament to the way Relic works that it has had great staff retention, and that it has focused on making Company of Heroes 2 a great game.”

Heaton added that “there are no plans to tie the two studios together”, but did confirm that SEGA was “already seeing knowledge feed back from Relic into CA.”

Source: CVG

SEGA have confirmed to Kotaku Australia that their Australian branch will be shutting down.

No more information has been given other than a vague timeframe of “later this year”.

SEGA’s Australian arm was once known as the Australian branch of Creative Assembly, under which name it produced games like Medieval II: Total War and Stormrise.

No reason was given for the closure, but SEGA also folded its Australian marketing and distribution arms in Australia last year citing financial pressures in a tightening market.

Source: Kotaku AU

The saga of “What The Hell Happened to Make Aliens: Colonial Marines So Terrible” rolls on, with a reveal over the weekend from an anonymous SEGA employee who claims that Gearbox quite literally stole money from SEGA to use on Borderlands.

An entire new blog has been set up by the name of ‘SEGA Awakens’, and Destructoid are claiming that they’ve independently verified the source behind it. The blogger, writing as “Bryan Danielson”, claims that “most of the information posted online is 99% true”, and that “Gearbox stole from SEGA, they robbed us, lied to us about the game, and tried to get another company to make the game instead.”

The post goes on to claim that Gearbox used the money SEGA gave them for Aliens: Colonial Marines to fund Borderlands instead, and that they then used the profits from that to grab the 3DRealms team and finish the development of Duke Nukem Forever, another poorly-received launch.

(more…)

SEGA’s acquisition of Relic from the burning wreckage of the THQ fire sale was one hell of a smart move. If you’d told me fifteen years ago that SEGA would have not only stopped making consoles, but gone on to become one of the juggernauts of the RTS market, I would have probably laughed at you. Laughed at you, and then ran like hell as you chased me through the corridors of my high school and demanded my lunch money.

Instead, fifteen years and $56 million later, SEGA now makes zero consoles but owns both The Creative Assembly and Relic — two companies who together make up some of the biggest names in the RTS genre, and a genre practically exclusive to PC.

So what does it all mean? Let’s take a look.

SEGA have confirmed yesterday’s news that they have acquired Relic from THQ.

“SEGA Corporation acquired all of shares of THQ Canada Inc. and some IPs owned by THQ Inc., a parent company of THQ Canada on January 24, 2013 in order to further reinforce PC game development capabilities in the U.S. and European regions,” reads the statement.

“We are thrilled to have Relic Entertainment join the SEGA family,” the statement continues. “The acquisition is a strategic fit and a critical step in growing our business (…) They are a well-respected studio with a reputation for making creative and innovative games and we look forward to seeing what great things we can create together over the coming years.”

With both Creative Assembly and Relic now wholly owned by SEGA, the company has suddenly captured a huge portion of the PC RTS market and give itself a potentially important advantage over companies like Blizzard. It’ll be interesting to see if SEGA puts the two studios on a two-year turnaround schedule, with alternating Total War and Company of Heroes titles each year. We’ll see!

Source: Blue’s News