News Article

Factor 5 Being Sued By Ex-Employees

Posted Fri, 19 Jun 2009 by Jonathan Wahlgren

Something is rotten in the state of Factor 5.

Lawsuit reveals a Rogue Squadron Wii game was in the works.

A few months back San-Rafael-based Factor 5 (the studio behind the popular Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series) was declared bankrupt with between $1 million to $10 million in unpaid debts. In addition to this, the company was also faced with 69 claims for unpaid wages totaling more than $900,000. As you can imagine, much wailing and gnashing of teeth followed.

However, that's not the end of this sorry tale. Former employees are taking Factor 5's founders to court, accusing them of transferring company assets to a new company called Blue Harvest (Star Wars fans will be aware of the link there) to avoid paying debtors during the liquidation process. Those assets apparently include a new Rogue Squadron game for the Wii.

James Smith, a lawyer representing the employees, had this to say:

We allege in the suit that Factor 5 and its three founders fraudulently transferred assets, including source code and other intellectual property to Blue Harvest, which is now known as White Harvest. We believe and have alleged in the complaint that Factor 5 and White Harvest are essentially the same company, being run by the same people, being represented by the same sets of lawyers, with all the same management and ownership and control, performing all the same work that they were doing at Factor 5, just now with a new name and a new address.

Source: wii.ign.com.

Tags: Wii, Drama, Industry.

User Comments

1. Tails86 19 Jun 2009, 09:09 BST

That was kinda silly to do like looking under a rock xD!

2. Kim Jong-Il 19 Jun 2009, 09:21 BST

@ Tails
Have you had a traumatic experience where you found Goatse under a rock or something?

3. calculon 19 Jun 2009, 09:22 BST

Bit old news isn't it?

4. Burn 19 Jun 2009, 09:23 BST

So, essentially... No new Rogue Squadron game? Lame.
Oh yeah, um, that sucks for the ex-Factor 5 employees too. Yeah...

5. Kim Jong-Il 19 Jun 2009, 09:26 BST

@ Burn
Wow, I was going to post exactly the same thing. Mine would have ben post #4, too. Are you my twin?

6. JimLad 19 Jun 2009, 09:36 BST

I KNEW IT!
They slated the Wii originally, but I knew they couldn't survive without making another Rogue Squadron game, and... I guess they left it too late. :/
Sucks for the employees that got screwed over, and sucks for Star Wars fans. Not too long ago Free Radicals version of Battlefront 3 also got scrapped over money issues.

7. Corbie 19 Jun 2009, 09:40 BST

As sad as it is, when these game companies go under, it's usually not pretty.

8. y2josh 19 Jun 2009, 10:21 BST

Boom goes the dynamite!

9. Sean Aaron 19 Jun 2009, 10:45 BST

That does suck for the Factor 5 folk, but if I'm reading that correctly work is still progressing on this title with White Harvest, so assuming they survive this lawsuit we will have a new Rogue Squadron game!

Now if they improve the horribly imbalanced difficulty level of the original game and eliminate the crappy 3rd-person action parts and focus on the ship dogfighting that will be a game I'd definitely pick up.

10. Incognito D 19 Jun 2009, 12:42 BST

The only thing I care about here is whether or not we get a new Rogue Squadron game. Even porting the original to the VC would be a great.

11. Kim Jong-Il 19 Jun 2009, 12:45 BST

@ Incognito D
[sarcasm]The world needs more people like you.[/sarcasm]

12. Relevant Latty 19 Jun 2009, 14:18 BST

It's a shame that the employees have to suffer but I got to admit that the move the founders did was quite clever.

I mean I am not saying that they should have done that but it was pretty sneaky to just move your address to avoid the debt. I bet alot of companies do this though to avoid a backlash from the workers. Seems it went wrong here this time and rightly so!