BottleRocket Fires Back at Namco, Suggests Publisher Management Was 'Inept'

Original Splatterhouse developer BottleRocket Entertainment today shot back at former publisher Namco Bandai, alleging that Namco was "inept" in its handling of the project.

BottleRocket was abruptly dismissed from Splatterhouse development last month. Since then, Namco has publicly defended the move, stating that there was a "performance issue" with BottleRocket.

But BottleRocket has now issued its own version of the story, defending its performance record while accusing Namco of mismanagement.

"We too have to be careful of what we say since publishers have to worry about their 'image' and will sue small, independent studios who bark back at them too loudly," begins a BottleRocket statement issued to Gamasutra.

Continues BottleRocket:

Game development contracts are put in place to protect the publisher and their interests. Within these contracts are a series of defined game development objectives and goals called milestones. If a developer is under performing they tend to fail these milestones and have varying degrees of accountability placed upon them. Splatterhouse had been in development for over eighteen months and up to having the title taken away from us we had not missed any contractually defined milestones. So either there were no performance issues during that timeframe or Namco's management of the title was inept.