Descent Developers Say Interplay Owes Them Royalties

GOG (Good Old Games) has removed the Descent series of games from its catalog following allegations from its creators that they were not being paid for their work by the game's publisher Interplay.

Descent, Descent II and Descent III: Mercenary were pulled from the store on December 18. GOG states that they did so due to "changing hands and in-flux legal agreements."

The online retailer, best known for its DRM-free practices, apologized to gamers and says that it's working to bring these games back.

Speaking to Kotaku, Descent developers Matt Toschlog and Mike Kulas say that Interplay has not been paying them royalties for years and that they are owed "tens of thousands of dollars" from the once big games publisher.

"We've talked to them about this numerous times over the years, and finally took action this fall," the Parallax representatives, Matt Toschlog and Mike Kulas wrote. "We served Interplay official notice that they were in breach of the contract, and when they still failed to pay we terminated the agreement."

"This means that Interplay has lost the right to sell the Descent games, which is why they came down from GOG. (We're not sure why they're still on Steam; they shouldn't be.)

"Interplay does, however, still own the Descent trademark, which they are free to use or license as they see fit (such as for Descent: Underground) as long as they don't violate our copyrights."

Interplay is best known for publishing Fallout and Baldur's Gate in the late '90s before going into decline in the 2000's. Most of its talent went on to found Obsidian Entertainment and InXile. Since then, the publisher's Fallout license was bought up by Bethesda and its Dungeons & Dragons-related contracts with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast expired. It continues to retain the rights to a number of key '90s franchises, including Descent.