I'm reminded of a similar event with the Doom soundtrack https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-d...
But Mick's case is very different. Mojang did pay, the guy did write, it's just that the guy wanted more than there was there in the informal agreement.
Mick Gordon did sign, idSoftware did not follow the contract, failed to pay on multiple occasions and did not even try to come back to reason in the longer term. Then there's the whole OST story, which is a different kind of evil. Marty Stratton, the producer of the game, played a very dirty game with Gordon with all of the blame shifting and payment problems and that horrible, horrible original reddit post.
At least that's my reading of it after first hearing about this issue at all. Maybe there's another side to the story.
It sounds like Mojang threw £20k at the author without understanding or articulating what that payment entitled them to.
At a later point they realised they didn't own the actual work itself and tried to strong-arm the author into giving them that ownership for effectively nothing.
At the time Mojang appears to believe that this could be an issue during due diligence. With the amount of money on the table, even offering a life changing sum to the author would have had a nearly imperceptible affect on the overall balance of the acquisition.
Both sides didn't clear up the legal side of things, yes, but it doesn't change the fact that both were OK with it until... until what? What did change? The writer wanted more... money? Recognition?
That doesn't make any sense. When you treat people with "emotions" ... this is the issue. Emotions are unclear, confusing and are different for everyone. Treating people based on emotions and feelings just results in inequality and confusion for everyone. This the perfect example where if treated it as a rational and business transaction, he would have come out on top. It's his emotions, and the fact that he created some sort of friendship for which he accepted "less" money is his fault. If he treated the issue rationally and sent it to this agent, he would be far happier today.
this reasoning carries an implicit assumption (or axiom[1]): "money can buy happiness"
in fact, the argues in the story, that they would probably not have as good as a relationship with their first child if they'd had gotten a lot of money back when all this went down...
[1] what is an axiom? I haven't quite figured it out, but an axiom should never be implicit. so maybe not a good simile[2].
[2] the fuck's a simile? analogy? metaphor? ugh.
I’ve found this to be very effective in avoiding writers who want to be thought of as artists.
