In my world, you have a choice about what job opportunity to pursue - in most cases…
I understand, there is a good chance you don't work in the Game Development industry, if you did you might notice there are not a lot of choices. Your lucky actually you have choices and can afford to make morally correct choices without depriving you and your family of food clothing and shelter, so be thankful.
Was there any need to be so rude about it?….
Really? I felt like I was responding in kind, in the sense you brought up *sounding like slander* to me. I didn't realize there was a need to be specific, nor do/did I have time to go into great detail. Since you seem serious and possibly concerned, I can briefly give some of what I recall.
Yes this is about Gothic 3 and the publishers behavior towards a great RPG maker and franchise IP. The publisher instead of paying PB for honest labor they performed in patching Gothic 3. Iirc, they had 1 gig patch done fairly quickly considering the masterpiece their were trying to create with huge world and just MASSIVE choices with consequences. Instead of paying PB the money, they hired an outside company who had never worked on the game, used the money to pay them to make, guess what? A one gig patch (ok not exactly), any idea how much longer the game owners had to wait, how sales were effected, reputations damaged? They also took legal maneuvers to make an expansion (as you rightly mentioned) and sequel (4th game) in the universe, without the franchise owner/creators. This was all becasue they didn't want to pay PB money they earned by making the patch.
They did all this and MORE harm, they took characters with the expansion and damaged the product, with stories and backgrounds PB did NOT intend. If you want to bring up slander and you care about the RPG gaming future, you should consider using that word to describe what the publisher did to the franchise. Just a suggestion.
These creators/developers/owners PB had published a successful independent game Gothic with another publisher before moving to this publisher, it was an established franchise. They are one of the few independents left, since the publisher was withholding money, taking rights to demean the lore and credibility of the franchise, PB sought quite easily (since they are so talented) a new publisher to make a new game. Risen did quite well (iirc) as an new franchise, though many main stream gamers don't play 40 hour long games but the RPG community was quite happy, especially considering it was made from scratch.