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| | The lights go out at the old-school game company, Sierra, as Vivendi Universal Games has cut 350 staff and shut down Sierra. Sierra created some of the most popular action and adventure games in the 80's - " Space Quest", "King's Quest", "Leisure Suit Larry" and the Hoyle brand of card and board games. They will be missed.
The company Sierra On-Line is popular amongst many users for the many number of games. There is Babylon5, Diablo / Hellfire the continuation and RPG The Realms, and also other game products. As you can see, the company is engaged in preparing games in every possible genre. On its server, you find descriptions of all products which were released by Sierra On-Line know about new developments and receive demo versions free of charge.
All could remain under a cloak of secrecy, if not for the useful habit of the American people to run to court at the slightest pretext. MM3D, the company-developer of computer games proceeded against one of the leading firms in this area - the company Sierra On-Line, and accused it in the unilateral revision of the contract conditions with MM3D. A contract subject was a joint action with the project of the network RPG "The Lord of the Rings".
For a long time Sierra has got at successors of J.R.R.Tolkien the license for computer game development on the plot of the trilogy "The Lord of the Rings". In 1998 it declared plans for the development of such a game, however delays began and the project was closed eventually. Subsequently the company declared that it is going to renew works in this direction, but anything more concrete has not been said and it was not informed at the beginning of the works. Meanwhile, according to the claim, submitted MM3D, the change of the contract conditions offered by Sierra on participation in the development of the game, named in the claim "Tolkien Online RPG", would run into 10 million dollars trouble for MM3D. It means, that the project cost considerably exceeds Sony's expenses for the online game EverQuest creation (12 million dollars), but the development cost of modern not network games usually does not reach 5 million dollars.
It follows from this that Sierra prepares the real network super blockbuster release in deep secret. Most likely, the game promotion campaign will be somehow connected with the beginning of the first film of the trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" distribution (it will appear on the silver screen on December, 19th).
The appearance of the information relating to the court action has caused an instant reaction from both parties. The Sierra Company's press service has declared that it will agree with MM3D and assize will not be. Any additional comments have not been given. Now the web site MM3D gives out only the message that the company hopes for further cooperation with Sierra Online; they are glad that they had such good relations and would like that they will have close business connections further and also that Sierra Online has reached agreements still.
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