Playdead co-founder Dino Patti has been threatened with a lawsuit after he posted a now-deleted LinkedIn post that shared an “unauthorized” picture of co-founder Arnt Jensen.
Patti left Playdead in 2016. In 2017, some of the details behind the acrimonious split between Playdead’s management emerged after a Danish newspaper reported on a rift that had developed between him and creative director Arnt Jensen.
Now, in a “legal love letter” sent on March 3, Patti said Jensen demanded a little over $73,000 in “suitable compensation and reimbursement.” Patti added that he has “repeatedly” had such letters over the last nine years.
In its letter, Playdead said: “We want to repeat and caution that your continued use of Playdead’s assets and any disclosure and exploitation of inside knowledge about Playdead for commercial purposes is infringing and constitutes breach of confidentiality clauses and of loyalty obligations concerning information obtained during your employment at Playdead.
“By providing recipients with core insights to the process of developing Limbo, you are falsely giving the impression that you played a significant role, including a creative role, in the development of the game. This gives a false and misleading impression to business partners and to the game industry as you were not actually an essential part of the creative development of Limbo.”
“My old partner has threatened me with an IP lawsuit because I used a publicly available picture, in a LinkedIn post three months ago, of the game Limbo that we created at Playdead together,” Patti wrote on LinkedIn.
“Arnt, last time you tried to bully me, I told you I’d make it public. So here we go.”
Patti then detailed the contributions he believes he made whilst at Playdead, adding he thought Jensen was “a genius” but “without me, Playdead wouldn’t have existed. That’s not ego. That’s a fact.”
“Arnt, please stop the bullying. I will not stop being who I am.”
In a clarifying email to Game Developer yesterday, Playdead confirmed it had “submitted demands” to Patti concerning alleged “infringement and unauthorized use of Playdead’s trademarks and copyrighted works in a commercial and marketing context.”
“We have found it necessary to take this action to protect our trademarks and copyrights, which are essential to Playdead’s business and reputation,” the studio said.