Dragon's Lair Creator Sues for 50 Million

The president and founder of Virtual Image Productions (VIP), Rick Dyer, has filed a lawsuit against Behaviour Communications Inc. (previously known as Malofilms) in California Superior Court for multiple breaches of contract and computer crime.

Dyer, who developed the original Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, and most recently, Shadoan, is asking for at least US$50 million in damages.

The lawsuit alleges that Behaviour (in the Malofilms days) fraudulently obtained a seizure order for the Sega Saturn version of Shadoan from the home of programmer Pierre Proulx.

As a result, VIP claims that since authorities seized all of the code for Shadoan, it was impossible to develop the Saturn version of Shadoan, which disrupted VIP's rollout plans.

Jeremy G. Schuster, the lead attorney representing VIP, said that Behaviour's bad faith "destroyed the development cycle and viability of games that were well-positioned for release. My regret is that we trusted Behaviour after they failed to make a $100,000 required payment; we should have litigated and crushed them at that time."

"We are obligated to our developers, many of whom are participants in the venture," said Dyer. "We can't forsake them and allow Behaviour to skate away after they destroyed our productions."