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Leslie Benzies, the former President at Rockstar North, is suing Take-Two for $150 million in unpaid royalties. He claims that the company tried to force him out after he took a sabbatical. If you recall, the news back in January made it sound like Benzies had quit out of the blue after a 17-month long sabbatical from the company.Benzies, by way of a statement issued by his legal consult, Christopher Bakes, said that "while on sabbatical, Mr. Benzies discovered numerous deceptions on the part of Take-Two, Rockstar, Rockstar North Ltd, Sam Houser and Dan Houser, who sought to force him out of the company and terminate his portion of royalty payments based upon arbitrary actions by the company's royalty Allocation Committee, a committee that may or may not have actually ever met."
Benzies claims that he tried to return to work on April 1, 2015 at which point he says he found that his key was deactivated. The statement says that Benzies was let inside by building security but was then "ordered to leave by the Rockstar North office manager without reason."
There's also an interesting bit in the lawsuit about the development of Red Dead Redemption and Benzies' role in it all.
As Sam Houser himself recognized, the Houser brothers were incapable of completing large and complex games without Mr. Benzies’ oversight, management and skill in taking unwieldy designs and making an understandable, cohesive, and enjoyable game. For example, Sam and Dan Houser took the lead on the development of Rockstar’s game Red Dead Redemption. Mr. Benzies had no assigned position on the game. As the game’s delivery date grew near, Sam Houser urgently reached out to Mr. Benzies in an October 22, 2009 e-mail, writing, “The ups and downs are VERY extreme. We have to fix this. Quickly. Help! I’m freaking!” As Sam Houser reviewed more of the game that he had overseen for many years, he became more desperate writing to Mr. Benzies the very next day, “This [RDR] is a (recurring) nightmare. But one i/we need to get out of. I have problems with the camera all over the place. So much so, that I can’t be rational or specific about it. The darkness!!!” As reflected in his October 24, 2009 e-mail to Mr. Benzies, Sam Houser’s desperation was escalating, “PLEASE help me/us get rdr [Read Dead Redemption] into shape. I am a jabbering wreck right now. I need The Benz!” Once Mr. Benzies intervened, the game was finished within a few months, complete and ready for presentation to external publishers such as Sony and Microsoft.
This is going to be quite interesting to keep an eye on in the months ahead.
