Valve Sues Activision, Activision Threatens to Return Fire

Looks like E3 won’t be the only time we’ll be seeing more than half of the gaming industry under one roof in the near future.
 
After totally serving Activision with God as its witness, Valve’s sicking its lawyers on Activision again – this time, because Activision tried to weasel out of the agreement the two gaming giants made last time they duked it out in court. Confusing, right? Let us break it down for you.
 
Due to a 2002 dispute over royalties, Valve sued Activision. Valve more or less won, and Activision agreed to throw the Half-Life creator a bone to the tune of $2,391,932. So far so good, but without the watchful eye of the law staring the two companies in the face, things fell apart.
 
Soon after litigations came to an end, Activision decided that Valve had been overpaid by $424,136 in previous years. Thus, when Valve’s hard-earned check finally showed up, it read $1,967,796 instead of the full amount agreed upon in court. As a result, Valve’s firing up the ol’ litigation machine again, and Activision is threatening to counter-sue.
 
Personally, we’d rather just have respective company heads Gabe Newell and Bobby Kotick hop in the cage and throw hands, but then, lack of widespread fighting is just one of the many drawbacks of today’s legal system. Oh well.