Last year, the studio behind the ever popular “Dungeon Defenders”, Trendy Entertainment, sued the developer of “Ark: Survival Evolved” Wildcard over allegations that the former president of Trendy Entertainment, Jeremy Stieglitz attempted to recruit other developers from the studio over to the Ark project-this being a direct violation of his contract. In his contract it was detailed that he was not to poach his former peers after he left the studio.
A motion for writs of attachment and garnishment (filed April 6th) stated that Jeremy Stieglitz owed Trendy Entertainment’s owner Insight Ventures $26 Million dollars, predicting that a final figure could be much higher. Accusing Stieglitz and his wife of shady dealings, including stashing their assets in international banks, it says “This amount does not include the substantial damages that Insight incurred as a result of Stieglitz’s failure to honor the right of first refusal, nor does it take into account the tens of millions of dollars by which Wildcard was unjustly enriched by using Trendy’s intellectual property,”
The plaintiff also accuses Stieglitz of having the intention of continuing to remove their assets from Flordia, going as far as to state “Whether it be lying under oath, using Susan’s maiden name to hide Stieglitz’s involvement in Wildcard, evading service, or planning secret trips to Singapore to hide assets and remove them from the reach of this Court, one thing is clear: The Stielgitzes will stop at nothing to block Trendy and Insight from successfully collecting their debts.”
However, there was a final written settlement agreement (the conditions were not released to the public, however a post on Reddit made by Susan Stieglitz that was quickly deleted can be quoted as saying “We ended up settling for 40 [million]”) though according to this tweet the amount of money initially asked for was $600 million.
Sources: Gamasutra, PCGamer, Susan Stieglitz’s Twitter
