gamecock posts

The original Section 8 was a solid sci-fi multiplayer-oriented first person shooter that appealed to the Tribes fan in all of us. However developer TimeGate Studios was apparently unhappy with how its publisher Southpeak Games handled the release of the title back in 2009 and last December sued the publisher over claims of unpaid royalties.

While there's no word on the outcome of that lawsuit that isn't stopping Timegate from its announcement today of Section 8: Prejudice, the next game in the shooter series. There's no word yet on specific features for the game but GameTrailers.com has a pretty action-packed gameplay trailer that shows off a lot of new environments and other features. The game is due out sometime in early 2011. You can check out the trailer after the jump:

Mike Wilson has had a long history in the game business. He has been the "biz guy" at id Software, was one of the co-founders of Gathering of Developers and Gamecock and currently is the head of Devolver Digital, who has helped to publish Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter and the upcoming The Second Encounter.

Now Wilson can add another credit to his resume: film producer. The Austin American-Statesmen web site reports that Wilson is financing the upcoming low budget comedy Austin High. Filming is scheduled to begin in June on the movie. The movies plot has a stoned-out principal of a fictional Austin, Texas high school dealing with a more straight-laced vice principal who tries to "reform the school into a strict, by-the-book institution." Not surprisingly, the real Austin school district declined to allow the filmmakers the use of any of their facilities.

Section 8 developer TimeGate Studios has filed yet another lawsuit related to their recent sci-fi shooter. This time the group getting the nasty letter is none other than the game's publisher SouthPeak Games. According to documents obtained by our sister site Joystiq, Timegate is alleging that, among other things, SouthPeak has withheld royalty payments and has mislead Timegate about the sales of the game.

This is the third lawsuit that TimeGate has filed concerning Section 8. The first two were against the ABC TV network and Paramount Pictures with TimeGate accusing both of violating their Section 8 trademarks. Both of those lawsuits were later settled out of court.

Last fall, the promising game publisher Gamecock Media Group sold off its assets to Southpeak Games, thanks mostly to one of Gamecock's rich investors pulling out after the financial crisis hit. Now our sister site Joystiq is reporting that many of the people and vendors who were owed money by working on Gamecock's games are still waiting for Southpeak to pay up. Some have even filed lawsuits against Southpeak.

The report, which cites a number of sources that wanted to remain anonymous, claims that Southpeak has told several of the people who are owed money that "Gamecock's upper management simply took the money and ran". Not true, according to Gamecock co-founder Mike Wilson, who was interviewed for the story. He states, "We got absolutely nothing for the small amount of equity that we owned," and added that they "got a reduced severance in order to be able to start working on our new company (Devolver Digital)". Southpeak Games' only official comment on the story? "SouthPeak continues to diligently work through the outstanding details related to the acquisition of Gamecock Media Group. We cannot comment on any pending litigation other than those cited in our public filings."

The announcement of the Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD title today mentioned the inolvement of a previously unknown company called Devolver Digital, described as a "production and publishing company based in Austin, Texas, specializing in delivering top quality entertainment to gamers worldwide at affordable prices by any and all means available."

Through a little research, Big Download discovered that Devolver Digital is in fact the new company from Mike Wilson and Harry Miller, two of the co-founders of the now legendary Gathering of Developers and later the co-founders of Gamecock. When contacted Wilson admitted his and Miller's involvement with the company "along with a few other old friends."

Wilson told us, "We're basically acting as the production company for the XBLA game, since we are not an official MSFT publisher yet, and will be publishing the PC version of the games." Gathering of Developers was the first publisher for Croteam's Serious Sam games and Wilson told us, "Croteam owns the IP still since they had a g.o.d. deal, and are therefore able to work with us again on the new version(s)." We hope to get more info on Wilson's newest game venture in the near future.

Small game publisher Southpeak Games continues to expand its reach and that's evident in their latest financial results. For the quarter that ended on March 31, Southpeak had revenues of $13.5 million compared to just $2.2 million for the same period a year ago. The company had a profit of $566,000 for the the quarter compared to just $20,.000 for the same period a year ago.

Southpeak has continued to expand its game line-up, thanks in part to last fall's purchase of Gamecock which added several current and upcoming titles to their library. The company is spending $14 million on IP and game development compared to just $4 million for the same period a year ago.

Get ready for some World War II spy action really soon. Publisher Southpeak Games has announced that Velvet Assassin has now gone gold and will ship to stores as planned next week (April 30 to be exact) for both the PC and Xbox 360 consoles.

Originally the game was being developed by Replay Studios to be published by Gamecock but came under the Southpeak Games umbrella when that company bought Gamecock's assets last fall. Players will be able to control British spy Violette Summer (based on the real WWII secret agent Violette Szabo) as she sneaks around those nasty Nazis and tries to bring their plans down. Southpeak sent over new screenshots from the game (six in all) that we have added to our gallery.

Gamecock's purchase by Southpeak Games last fall resulted in several of Gamecock's upcoming games being brought into the Southpeak publishing line up. One former Gamecock game that hasn't been heard from lately is Dungeon Hero, the fantasy action-RPG from UK based Firefly Studios.

This week the developer's official web site finally posted up an update on the title admitting that the shutdown of Gamecock "created a number of challenges for us over the past weeks and months". Originally set for release sometime this spring, Dungeon Hero's release has now been delayed. The update didn't provide a new release date and failed to state if the game has found a publisher. It did state that Firefly has "a couple of exciting projects built around the Dungeon Hero universe that we will be talking about soon".

And for those of you waiting for an revival of Firefly's multi-million selling RTS game series Stronghold, there's good news as well. The update states, " . . . we are moving up a gear on the production of the next game in the Stronghold series."

[Via Joystiq]

While other game publishers (*cough* Midway *cough* THQ *cough* EA) are in various states of financial decline at the moment, smaller game publisher Southpeak Games actually had a solid quarter of revenues and profits, at least according to their latest financial results.

The company revealed that its last financial quarter, which ended Dec. 31, 2008, had revenues of $17.3 million for the time period, over four times the amount it got for the same time period a year ago ($4.2 million). Southpeak pulled in a profit of $1.2 million for the last quarter. Last fall the company bought out Gamecock's game line-up, including Legendary. and this year the company has plans to publish a number of PC game titles including Section 8, Velvet Assassin and the upcoming fantasy RPG sequel Two Worlds: The Temptation.

This is the demo for Legendary, a first-person shooter where players combat mythological creatures set free from Pandora's Box.
Download Legendary Demo (1.92 GB)
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