Rune 2 lawsuit alleges deliberate sabotage from Bethesda, ZeniMax - Gamasutra

Publisher Ragnarok has returned to the courtroom, this time with accusations of fraud and breach of contract levied at shuttered Rune 2 developer Human Head as well as at Bethesda and ZeniMax, the owners of the studio that sprung up over night after Human Head’s closure.

Human Head was suddenly shuttered last November, an announcement made a single day after Rune 2’s release and paired with news that the former Human Head staff were starting a new dev house, Roundhouse Studios, under Bethesda.

Now this latest legal filing takes aim at Human Head’s leadership as well as at Bethesda and parent company ZeniMax for what Ragnarok (and another former Human Head partner ESDFOS) call “fraud and the intentional sabotage of two video games.

Ragnarok alleges that Human Head and Bethesda/ZeniMax conspired for months to undermine the release of Rune 2, pointing to the conflict surrounding its source code and the fact that the game’s launch was overshadowed by the Roundhouse news as evidence of this fact.

According to the lawsuit, the staff and equipment of Human Head was acquired by ZeniMax nearly a week before the closure was announced or before Rune 2 would release.