The developer of a canned Beyonce Knowles dancing game says it's been "destroyed" and is $100m out of pocket after the superstar singer pulled out of the project.
New York-based Gate Five is reportedly suing Beyonce for "a bad faith breach of contract so callous that, on what appeared to be a whim, she destroyed Gate Five's business and drove 70 people into unemployment, the week before Christmas".
The developer says the game - which was planned for motion peripherals such as Kinect, Move and Wii - would've made over £100m and had already cost $6m at the time of Beyonce's walkout.
The court documents say the singer "made an extortionate demand for entirely new compensation terms she wanted".
That manoeuvre allegedly "backfired and drove away the financier (who found [Knowles] too erratic to do business with)". Knowles subsequently "pulled out of the project in breach of the agreement".
Apparently, Beyonce's negotiation tactics were "so unscrupulous that her then manager (who is also her father) renounced them".
"In early December everything was still a go. And then the week of Christmas, she said that's it, I don't want to hear from you guys, go away, resulting in 70 people losing their jobs," Gate Five founder Greg Easley told New York Magazine (via MCV).
"We'd much rather make a game than litigate. But we want to recover damages that Gate Five suffered."
The Kinect, Wii and Move Michael Jackson dancing game, developed by Ubisoft, has already sold three million copies.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/29 ... e-lawsuit/
