The Final Days of Taldren

Erin Hoffman has a fantastic piece up on The Escapist about the final days of Taldren and their masterpiece-that-never-saw-the-light-of-day, Black9. It’s a tale of a publisher (in this case, Majesco) royally screwing over a developer, using illegal bullying tactics, stealing source code, and of course, the batshit insane publisher-side producer.

You should go read it, because this is the kind of story you normally only hear about when you’re 7 drinks in at midnight on Thursday at the Game Developers Conference.

As an aside, one of the books I recommend people read is Erik Bethke’s Game Development and Production. Bethke was one of the founders of Taldren, and his book actually includes some information on Black9 and lots of great information on how development process worked at Taldren.