Following a pretty ugly legal battle, it seems that Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard have reached a settlement with Trendy Entertainment.
Provided you don’t keep up to the minute in the world of videogame developer lawsuits, here’s a quick rundown of what happened: Trendy Entertainment claimed that a former employee by the name of Jeremy Stieglitz breached his contract by working on the Ark in secret.
As such, Trendy reckon that Stieglitz had a direct negative impact on his former company by leaving to make the dinosaur based survival game. Studio Wildcard disagreed, and legal action began.
Terms of the settlement were not publicly disclosed, but Studio Wildcard co-founder (and wife of Jeremy) Susan Stieglitz wrote on Twitter that Trendy were after 600 million.
Lol they want 600 million
— Susan Claire (@SusanCStieglitz) April 12, 2016
She then wrote in a DM to a fan (that was then shared it on Reddit) that Trendy ended up getting 40 million.
Kotaku reports that the settlement was decided upon last Wednesday, April 13. Mediation took place between Studio Wildcard and Trendy in Gainesville, Florida, where Trendy is based.
The case was scheduled to go to court on April 27, and Trendy actually requested an injunction that could have led to work on Ark being halted and removed from sale.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.