Dirt 2 group says Playground Games has poached key staff with knowledge of trade secrets
Codemasters is embroiled in a legal dispute with rival local racing studio Playground Games.
The Dirt 2 outfit accuses Playground Games of hiring key Codemasters staff, and thus, trade secrets.
Playground Games opened at the start of 2010, having been established by former Codemasters CEO Nicholas Wheelwright.
Wheelwright previously said The Midlands studio wanted to hire about 20 staff.
Now Codemasters claims in a High Court writ that Playground Games head-hunted and hired key employees with access to trade secrets and confidential information.
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Codemasters accuses that the move will give Playground Games a head start of about 12 months in developing and marketing games.
“Those employees constituted a ready-made top-rate racing games development team. Between them they had some 100 years of experience in creating, developing and producing first-class computer racing games,” read the writ, as quoted by the Daily Mail.
The legal dispute continues.
People only leave if the grass looks greener.
Someone moving jobs is up to them - otherwise isn't it some kind of restrictive practice?
Many other comapnies use 'golden handcuffs' with long terms of notice and penalties for early termination for key staff. Clearly Codemasters missed a trick here.
I can't see how there is any legal imperative here, unless Playground produce a game based on Codies tech.
Quoting 3rd hand out of date rubbish from The Daily Mail isn't journalism.
You lazy blighters.
I laugh at your aspersions.
Codemasters will never have taken on staff from other companies that came with their own "package of experience"... or maybe they have.
People change jobs, knowledge is not copyrightable, only the use of that knowledge can be restricted by contract. And only the knowledge that was exclusively learned as part of the Codemasters employment, during the normal working hours.
This is like the old "if you think it, it's ours... if you make it, it's ours... even if you're at home when it happens" clause, studios always try and add. LOL, yeah, good luck with that one.
Codemasters have been recruiting staff from other developers for 25 years. And other developers have been recruiting from Codemasters. The phones ring all the time with recruitment vultures making a living off the merry go round.
Since the venture capialists bought Codemasters and parachuted in their own senior management team there has been a huge staff turnover. A lot of the old timers who made the great games and the resultant profits are now gone.
This time 17 have left and all gone to the same new employer. These were pretty much all the key people from the racing studio. And the racing studio is the heart of Codemasters. So this is not good news for the new Indian investors.
It looks like Codemasters has been on a downward spiral since the venture capitalists bought it. Losing these key people will just speed up this spiral. But the problems at Codemasters are not caused by those who leave, they are caused by those who make people want to leave.
