My favorite thing about the legal action filed over Aliens: Colonial Marines is the way Sega tried to portray Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford as a loose cannon. He was initially seen as a "respected development celebrity" who would help garner coverage but, like a cane toad in Australia, once he got going, there was apparently no stopping him.
Now that the matter is effectively over, Pitchford is speaking his mind again. "That whole thing was a huge waste of time," he said in an interview with GamesIndustry. "The market proved it was doing its job perfectly. The market is dispassionate—rewarding what it likes and punishing what it doesn't. There is an objectivity and fairness in the open market's harsh, firm justice."
But while the market worked as it should—and by that, I assume he means that people found out that Colonial Marines was a train wreck and opted to spend their money on more worthwhile things, like temporary tattoos—Pitchford believes the the legal system failed. The courts were manipulated by "what appeared to me to be essentially Mafia-style extortion tactics," he said, and it would've worked, too, if it weren't for those pesky kids at Gearbox.
"Those guys made a mistake in naming us as defendants because we stood up to them. That's all it took—someone to stand up to them," he said. "And so they lost since they didn't have a legitimate case."
The Aliens: Colonial Marines lawsuit was filed against Sega and Gearbox in 2013, but while Sega eventually offered to settle for $1.25 million, Gearbox refused. Back in May, that turned out to be a wise move: The studio was dropped from the suit and the judge in the case declined to certify it as a class action.
