A New York City judge has given the green light to a lawsuit against Beyonce for backing out of a dance game entitled Starpower: Beyonce.
Back in April, a game developer you’ve never heard of called Gate Five filed a $100 million lawsuit against Beyonce, claiming the singer had agreed to appear in a videogame called Starpower: Beyonce but then, once development had begun, tried to squeeze more money out of the deal. That maneuver caused an investor to back out of the game, which in turn led her to quit the project entirely in late December 2010.
The studio filed suit for $100 million, a nice, round figure that also just happened to be the profits it said it expected to earn on the game. The lawsuit has been on hold while Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos mulled over the singer’s request to dismiss it outright; her lawyers had argued that Beyonce was within her rights to pull out of the game because Gate Five failed to meet its November 10 deadline for securing funding. But the judge has now ruled, without explanation, that the suit will be allowed to proceed.
Gate Five effectively collapsed once the singer took the ring off it, resulting in the loss of 70 jobs. That’s very unfortunate by any measure and certainly not something to be flippant about; on the other hand, it’s hard not to see one less crappy, half-baked dance game in the world as at least a little bit of a silver lining.
Source: NYDailyNews.com, via GamePolitics
Published: Dec 7, 2011 10:46 pm