Gearbox Claims They Spent Millions of Its Own Money to Finish Aliens: Colonial Marines

[Shawn Zipay]

Aliens: Colonial Marines is the gift that just keeps on giving. This week, Gearbox's attorneys have filed requests to have the developer removed from four claims in a class-action lawsuit against itself and Sega over "false advertisement" for Colonial Marines. They filed another motion that looks to make the suit lose its status as a class-action lawsuit.

The original class-action lawsuit against Gearbox and Sega was filed by Roger Damion Perrine and John Locke. They say that both Gearbox and Sega falsely advertised the game by showing demos at various trade shows that simply were not accurate representations of the finished title. It perhaps doesn't really help Gearbox's case when Randy Pitchford said that the trade show demos were "actual gameplay" from the game despite having visuals, levels, and AI behavior not found in the final product.

Gearbox claims that they should not be included in the suit because it was merely acting as a contractor for Sega and that Sega had the final say on the game and its marketing. The filings also say that Gearbox had spent millions of their own dollars into the game, which will never be recovered due to poor sales.

Steve Gibson, VP of Marketing for Gearbox said the following in a deposition:
"During the development process, Gearbox supplemented Sega's development budget with its own money to help Sega finish its game; Gearbox's contributions to A:CM totaled millions, none of which was ever repaid.

"To develop the software, Gearbox utilized the Unreal 'game engine' licensed from Epic Games; this was the only game engine Gearbox used in the design and development of the game. Contrary to what some believe, the pre-release demonstrations were not made using different game engines.

"The game's sales were insufficient to trigger any sales-based payments to Gearbox and, as a result, Gearbox has not received any additional monies from Sega for the sale of the game. Gearbox only received the milestone payments made by Sega during the game's development."

Interestingly, the lawsuit could have been wrapped up a month ago as Sega and the plaintiffs were nearing an agreement. Under the agreement, Gearbox would have been dropped from the suit. The problem with that is that one of the plaintiffs, Damion Perrine, did not authorize any body to sign on his behalf and he was apparently missing. They found him. He was in jail on three unrelated charges.