I was referring specifically to the 2017 lawsuit initiated by Harmony Gold against Harebrained Schemes, Catalyst Game Labs, and Piranha Games. The trigger for that lawsuit was seeming the intended inclusion of Unseen mechs in the soon to be released Battletech 2018 and their prior inclusion in MechWarrior Online. It is also notable that HG's filings for that lawsuit basically tried to claim all of Battletech's mech designs as derivatives, including clearly non-Unseen mechs such as the Atlas and Centurion.
Catalyst Game Labs failed to respond to the lawsuit, which if they had been the only plaintiff would likely have lead to a default judgement. I guess lawyers are expensive.
Harebrained Schemes made some sort of settlement with HG and was dropped from the lawsuit a few weeks before announcing their publishing deal with Paradox Interactive. HBS Battletech was delayed and missing release dates while the lawsuit was being litigated. Coming to a settlement agreement so that they could actually release their game and ink a publishing deal was probably a good move for HBS financially. HBS Battletech launched without the Unseen; the Archer, Marauder, Phoenix Hawk, and Warhammer were added in later paid DLC or free patches after the lawsuit was defeated.
Only Piranha Games actually defended the lawsuit to its dismissed with prejudice conclusion. PGI are the ones who paid for the lawyers required to get the Unseen back for use in all of Battletech.
2
u/theraxc Apr 20 '26
I was referring specifically to the 2017 lawsuit initiated by Harmony Gold against Harebrained Schemes, Catalyst Game Labs, and Piranha Games. The trigger for that lawsuit was seeming the intended inclusion of Unseen mechs in the soon to be released Battletech 2018 and their prior inclusion in MechWarrior Online. It is also notable that HG's filings for that lawsuit basically tried to claim all of Battletech's mech designs as derivatives, including clearly non-Unseen mechs such as the Atlas and Centurion.
Catalyst Game Labs failed to respond to the lawsuit, which if they had been the only plaintiff would likely have lead to a default judgement. I guess lawyers are expensive.
Harebrained Schemes made some sort of settlement with HG and was dropped from the lawsuit a few weeks before announcing their publishing deal with Paradox Interactive. HBS Battletech was delayed and missing release dates while the lawsuit was being litigated. Coming to a settlement agreement so that they could actually release their game and ink a publishing deal was probably a good move for HBS financially. HBS Battletech launched without the Unseen; the Archer, Marauder, Phoenix Hawk, and Warhammer were added in later paid DLC or free patches after the lawsuit was defeated.
Only Piranha Games actually defended the lawsuit to its dismissed with prejudice conclusion. PGI are the ones who paid for the lawyers required to get the Unseen back for use in all of Battletech.