Activision responds to Scratch lawsuit, court denies restraining order

Posted by Mister-X on April 16th, 2009 at 06:30pm

Moving into day three of Breakin’ (the law) 2: Electric Boogaloo, Activision has fired back at Scratch: The Ultimate DJ LLC (Numark and Genius Products‘ joint business venture). It says allegations made in the lawsuit “are disingenuous and lack any merit,” and backs up that statement with the Los Angeles Superior Court’s decision not to grant a restraining order against the mega-publisher.

Furthermore, Activision claims that Genius Products is scapegoating the publisher, explicitly stating, “These allegations are nothing more than an attempt by Genius [Products] to place blame for the game’s delays, as well as to divert attention from the cash flow, liquidity and revenue challenges Genius detailed in its Mar. 30 SEC filing.”

The press release makes no mention of the “nine custom-manufactured turntable and beat-button game controllers” allegedly belonging to Numark nor the current state of development of Scratch: The Ultimate DJ, presumably still being held by Activision-owned 7 Studios. It does, however, tell us that the lawsuit will have “no effect” on the development of Activision’s own DJ-based rhythm game, DJ Hero. We’ve asked Activision for its official side of the story and will update this post accordingly as news develops.

Update: Activision has responded to our request for comment with, “Unfortunately, we do not have anything more to comment outside of the statement we put out.”

Activision responds to Scratch lawsuit, court denies restraining order originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.