Playdead, the developer behind indie darlings Limbo and Inside, has responded amidst an increasingly ugly spat between the company’s co-founders.
Reports of a rift between Playdead’s Dino Patti and Arnt Jensen are nothing new, and first circulated around the time Patti left Playdead following the launch of Inside in 2016.
This month, however, the friction between the two men has become public – following a claim by Patti that he was the subject of “bullying”, and that Jensen had “repeatedly” sent legal threats to him since his departure from the company.
The latest of these legal claims, Patti says, involves a now-deleted LinkedIn post in which he discussed Limbo’s development and shared a photo of an “unauthorised” photo taken by Jensen. Patti says he has now been asked to cough up the equivalent of £56k in compensation.
In response to Patti’s claim being made public, Playdead has issued a statement confirming it has “submitted demands” based on a claim of “infringement and unauthorised use of Playdead’s trademarks and copyrighted works in a commercial and marketing context” (thanks, Game Developer).
“We have found it necessary to take this action to protect our trademarks and copyrights,” the company said, “which are essential to Playdead’s business and reputation”.
In a legal document shared by Patti, Playdead wrote that “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”.
Sharing the document online, Patti said he was a “significant part of building Playdead from the ground up” and that without him, “Playdead wouldn’t have existed”.
“Arnt, please stop the bullying,” Patti concluded. “I will not stop being who I am. I will never erase my own history. You can’t rewrite the past just because of a bad breakup.”
Playdead is currently working on its third game, which it began teasing in 2017. In 2020, Epic Games confirmed it would handle publishing duties on the game.
Patti launched Somerville, his first game at new studio Jumpship, in 2022. An adventure platform game with physics-based puzzles, it received decent reviews, amidst comparisons to Playdead’s work.