A legal battle between Bungie, the developer of the likes of Halo and Destiny, and former employee Marty O'Donnell, has come to a close, with courts ruling against Bungie.
O'Donnell, who was a composer for the game developer, was reportedly fired without cause and made to give up his stock in the company and drop out of the company's profit-sharing plan.
According to documents released about the case, the abrupt firing of O'Donnell had actually been in the works since a series of events at E3 2013. O'Donnell had been working as a contractor for Bungie for a number of titles, and was hired as an employee in 1999, around the time that Bungie was bought by Microsoft.
In 2010, Bungie entered a marketing and development deal with Activision for a new first-person shooter franchise, which would eventually go on become Destiny. Instead of composing new music for each game, it was suggested that O'Donnell create music for the entire franchise, which would be a decade worth of games.
Of course, it would make sense that O'Donnell would be upset that right before E3 2013 Activision stepped in to take control of the trailer creation for the game, supplying its own music. While the team at Bungie filed a complaint to Activision, the publisher essentially overruled the complaint. In response, O'Donnell tweeted about the Activision-scored trailer, and threatening employees in an attempt to prevent the trailer from being posted online.
While O'Donnell thought that the Bungie spirit was being compromised, Bungie saw what he did as harmful, and was given a rather poor employee review in 2013. Instead of his next review, to take place in February 2014, the company drafted a termination agreement for O'Donnell. The agreement meant that O'Donnell would keep working on Destiny, which would span until no later than 2014. O'Donnell rejected the agreement because of the deadline, however he agreed to keep working.
Within a few months, members of O'Donnell's team were complaining about O'Donnell to management, and he was fired without cause on April 11.
Two lawsuits were filed by O'Donnell, one related to unpaid benefits, which has been resolved, and the other about the fact that O'Donnell was unjustly forced to give up his stock in Bungie.
As payment, O'Donnell will get 192,187.5 shares in Bungie, as well as payments from the Bungie payment plan.
