I would expect this story from a struggling indie game dev startup but ID Games, Zenimax, Mick Gordon and Stratton are all huge players in the game dev industry -- thus this looks bad for the industry as a whole. I was always curious about why the Doom Eternal OST never really showed up on Spotify. This story explains that.
On the contrary, after the horror stories coming from Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard, sometimes requiring the government to intervene, my expectation is really low. If anything this is a dull affair since nobody got killed or sexually harrassed.
This would never happen with an indie studio because they wouldn’t have the deep pockets to legally strong arm the contractor. If both parties were small businesses then the threat of legal action from either side would keep them both form misbehaving.
