With Acclaim Entertainment’s future still cloudy due to lack of f...
With Acclaim Entertainment’s future still cloudy due to lack of financing (CED July 6 p5), the publisher said it was battling to hang onto 2 of its most significant licensed properties. The company said in its latest 10-K SEC…
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filing that the Major League Baseball Player’s Assn. (MLBPA) informed it in May that because it was late in making certain royalty payments, Acclaim’s license was terminated. Acclaim said it was told that if it didn’t make the payments “in a timely fashion” and if “certain other remedies” weren’t made, the license wouldn’t be reinstated. But Acclaim claimed that it had actually “made all required payments to the MLBPA and [was] current with our payment obligations with certain MLB players.” The publisher said it hadn’t reached an agreement with the MLBPA “regarding the other requested remedies,” and “we disagree with MLBPA’s interpretation of the license agreement provisions and have advised them as such.” But Acclaim said “we are in continued discussions with MLBPA on this matter.” Acclaim said it was also told by Turok licensor Classic Media in June that because it hadn’t made certain royalty payments for the videogame Turok: Evolution, its licensing deal was terminated. The publisher said “we are in discussions with Classic in an effort to resolve this matter amicably.” Acclaim also mentioned a legal dispute with developer BattleBorne Entertainment. The latter company said since then that it obtained a preliminary injunction against Acclaim that prevented the publisher from shipping Combat Elite: WWII Paratroopers for PS2 and Xbox (CED July 7 p8). BattleBorne had sued Acclaim for breaching the companies’ development deal, claiming that the struggling publisher failed to make payments when due and threatened to ship the game before making all required payments.