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Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford continues to be embroiled in legal disputes stemming from a host of allegations made against him over the past few months. Wade Callender, Gearbox’s former legal counsel, filed a motion on Tuesday in Dallas County (Texas) district court for contempt and requested sanctions against Gearbox, alleging “discovery abuse” and failure to produce certain court-ordered documents.

This is the latest filing in a lengthy legal battle between Pitchford and Callender. It started with a filing by Gearbox in November 2018, alleging that Callender “exploit[ed] Gearbox’s generosity and trust for his own personal gain.” Callender responded with a countersuit a month later, accusing the Gearbox CEO of harassing the company’s former general counsel because of his Christian faith. The suit also accused Pitchford of taking a “secret” $12 million bonus as an advance on royalties, and of syphoning profits from Gearbox to fund “Peacock Parties” where adult male guests “reportedly exposed themselves to minors, to the amusement of Randy Pitchford.” There was also the USB drive Pitchford left in a Texas restaurant allegedly containing sensitive corporate information from the studio and its business partners–such as 2K Games, Take-Two Interactive, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft–as well as “underage pornography.” Ten days after the filing, Gearbox sued Callender for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty.

“Callender believes he can prove that GBX (Gearbox), and their lawyers, continue to violate this Court’s order and hide documents,” the most recent filing reads. “Enough is enough and GBX needs to be held in contempt and sanctioned for this behavior.” This follows months of back-and-forth legal disputes between the two parties. Callender served Gearbox with a set of eight interrogatories in February of this year, which the Borderlands developer responded to in March with a one-page document. Callender claimed a deficiency in this response and requested an amendment. After a week with no response, Callender filed a motion to compel Gearbox to respond to the deficiency letter. Gearbox agreed to provide amended interrogatory responses by July 3, but a later 30-day extension pushed this back to August 2.

When the latest deadline arrived, Gearbox provided their response, which included text correspondence between Pitchford and a “member of the press that he had podcast with” in which the two discuss the aforementioned USB drive. Pitchford appeared on the December 22 episode of the Piff Pod podcast one day after Callender’s suit was filed. During the conversation with comedian and fellow magician, host John van der Put, Pitchford mentioned the USB drive contained “barely legal pornography.”

“In response to ‘Is the USB stick falling out or has the internet moved on now?’, Pitchford replied ‘Internet is fine. All they care about is if my next video game is good or not.’ It comes as no surprise that GBX did not want to disclose this very telling document,” the latest filing claims.

The allegations claim the USB stick was discovered at a Medieval Times restaurant in 2014, in a location a stone’s throw away from Gearbox’s Plano, Texas, headquarters. During this time, Callender and other Gearbox counsel were mediating the Aliens: Colonial Marines class-action; another case where Pitchford’s conduct has been controversial. Earlier this year, Pitchford was involved in another dispute with former Gearbox vice president (and the original voice of Borderlands’ Claptrap), David Eddings. After Pitchford called him “bitter and disgruntled,” Eddings spoke up and accused the Gearbox CEO of physically assaulting him in a hotel lobby during GDC 2017, along with numerous other allegations.

On Monday, ahead of Callender’s official filing, the Dallas County Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Gearbox’s request for relief. The company claimed the “trial court abused its discretion by overruling numerous objections to requests for production of documents and compelling production of certain documents.” The appellate court stated that Gearbox “have not shown they are entitled to the relief requested.”

Koei Tecmo has teased a new game announcement for August 30, the same day PAX West opens its doors. The trailer doesn’t reveal any significant details, but all signs point to an enhanced version of 2018’s Warriors Orochi 4 being in development at Omega Force.

The sneak peek shows snippets of cutscenes from the most recent Warriors Orochi title, and Koei Tecmo is rather fond of re-releasing games in both the Warriors Orochi and Dynasty Warriors‘ series. A page on Amazon Japan that has since been removed lends further credence to these suspicions, with a listing for a PS4 version of Warriors Orochi 4 Ultimate appearing on the store. The product description mentioned a new story, new side scenarios, new game modes, and additional playable characters including Gaia and the return of earlier playable characters such as Joan of Arc, who was previously in Warriors Orochi 3.

We’ll know more on Friday when Koei Tecmo unveils its latest game.

Pokemon Sword and Shield may be coming to Nintendo Switch in only a couple of months, but in the meantime, The Pokemon Company has one more freebie in store for 3DS players. This October, you’ll be able to get a free Shiny Legendary in either Pokemon Sun and Moon or Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.

Beginning October 21, GameStop stores in the US will distribute a Shiny Solgaleo and Lunala for the 3DS Pokemon games. To claim the Legendaries, you’ll need to head to a participating location and use the Pokemon Pass mobile app to receive a download code–the same way you could acquire a Shiny Pikachu and Eevee code for the Let’s Go games earlier this year.

The Legendary you receive will be the opposite of which version you own, so if you’re playing Sun or Ultra Sun, you’ll receive a Shiny Lunala, while Moon and Ultra Moon players will get Shiny Solgaleo. Each Pokemon comes at level 60 and knows the following movesets:

Shiny Lunala

• Moongeist Beam
• Psyshock
• Moonblast
• Moonlight

Shiny Solgaleo

• Sunsteel Strike
• Zen Headbutt
• Noble Roar
• Morning Sun

Once you’ve received a download code for the Legendary, you’ll need to redeem it within the game using the Mystery Gift feature. Select Mystery Gift from the main menu, choose the option to receive a gift with a code/password, then input your code when prompted and the Legendary will be downloaded. You’ll then need to pick the Pokemon up from the deliveryman waiting inside any Pokemon Center.

The Shiny Solgaleo and Lunala distribution will run through November 10, just a few days before Sword and Shield launch on Switch. With the Gen 8 games on the horizon, this will presumably be the last distribution The Pokemon Company holds for Sun and Moon, so you don’t want to miss your chance to get the Shiny Legendaries.

There are still a couple of other freebies available for the Gen 7 games as well; you can download a pack of rare berries in the games until September 2, and Pokemon Bank subscribers can get a free Oranguru and Passimian until October 31. You can see all the free gifts still available for Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon in our roundup.

Telltale Games, creators of the episodic The Walking Dead, Batman, and Game of Thrones games, shut down last year after a tumultuous timeline of events, but a company called LCG Entertainment is bringing the beloved studio’s name back from the dead. The new company plans to sell some of Telltale’s back-catalog and will work on new games based on Telltale-associated properties and new licences.

Jamie Ottilie and Brian Waddle are heading up the new Telltale. Ottilie has spent much of his career in mobile games and was previously the founder and CEO of Galaxy Pest Control, a studio known for its work on licenced games such as Duck Dynasty, Power Rangers Legends, and Hotel Transylvania 2. Waddle, meanwhile, ran sales and marketing for the Havok game engine at Intel and later Microsoft.

In an interview with Polygon, Ottilie said that some workers from the original Telltale Games will be offered freelance roles at the new Telltale, with full-time positions possible in the future–so this is very much Telltale in name only at this point. He also confirmed that the new company still has back-catalog rights to licenced properties like The Wolf Among Us and Batman, as well as full rights to original Telltale games such as Puzzle Agent.

Before Telltale closed its door last year, the company was working on a sequel to The Wolf Among Us, with an announcement in 2017 and a planned release window sometime in 2018. Obviously that never happened, but Ottilie says it’s possible the new Telltale will pick up some stories where they left off. “We’re still evaluating, but we definitely want to continue some of the stories,” he said. Whether The Wolf Among Us 2 is part of that equation remains to be seen, and it’s not likely to resemble the game the original team was working on. What we do know, however, is that The Walking Dead won’t be coming back. The licence is now owned by Skybound, the company that finished development on the last two episodes of The Walking Dead’s final season after Telltale shuttered.

Ottilie didn’t shed light on the status of other previous Telltale licences like Borderlands, Minecraft, and Guardians of the Galaxy, but he did say the rights for the Stranger Things game Telltale had announced have now gone back to Netflix.

Negotiations for Telltale’s rights began six months ago and were purchased from a company assigned by the creditors of the original Telltale. A purchase price has not been announced, but despite the “incredibly complex” negotiations, Ottilie proceeded with the deal because of his belief in the future of adventure games. “This is a viable business that went away due to market conditions and some scale choices [Telltale’s previous management] made,” he said. “I like games that tell stories and I think our industry should have a company that specializes in narrative-driven games.”

The new studio will be based in Malibu, California, with publisher Athlon Games handling storefront operations and distribution. A number of games industry figures are involved in financially backing the studio, too, including Lyle Hall (Heavy Iron Studios), Chris Kingsley (Rebellion), and Tobias Sjögren (formerly of Starbreeze).

“We’re going to stay small over the next six months and we will work for more of a distributed development pipeline than Telltale was known for,” Ottilie explained. “We’ll focus on tools, technology and design in-house. Some things like animation and motion capture will be done with the right partnerships externally.” Ottilie also wants to evolve Telltake’s episodic model. “We will probably keep the concept of episodes but with different pacing. This is a different world, from a media consumption standpoint. We need to look at how people like to entertain themselves. I like the idea of binge-watching.

“[Telltale] brought me some of my favorite stories to play and they did an amazing job building a company. It’s unfortunate the way that it ended. Certainly we’re working very hard not to make similar mistakes.”

Update: The earlier leak has now been confirmed, along with some new details, as distributor Nighthawk Interactive and developer Digital Eclipse have announced Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC, set to release sometime this fall for $29.99.

The remastered collection includes the Sega Genesis, Game Boy, and Super Game Boy versions of Virgin Games’ Aladdin, and the SNES version of The Lion King. As the leak suggested, players will be able to rewind any of the games and play them in 1080p with updated visual effects and enhancements. Aladdin also features new difficulty adjustments, camera refinements, bug fixes, and promises some additional surprises. The collection also adds the ability to save anywhere at any time.

You can watch the announce trailer below. In the meantime, the bundle is up for pre-order at Best Buy.

See Disney Classic Games bundle at Best Buy

The original story continues.

A leak from the latest GameStop conference has revealed that HD remasters of the ’90s Aladdin and The Lion King SNES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games could be on their way to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch later this year.

The leak was first reported by Twitter user Wolverinefactor, who says the remasters will include the original soundtracks and contain both the SNES and Genesis versions of the games. A follow-up tweet says they’ll each be available to pre-order from GameStop “tomorrow morning”, so they might appear sometime today if this leak is correct.

Another source corroborated the information with Gematsu, reporting that both games will be playable in their original resolutions or in 1080p. There will also be new features that allow players to fast-forward and rewind to any point in the game, and they’ll even include the option to let the game take over to show players how to clear a stage. These sound like welcome additions after a childhood spent falling off the heads of giraffes.

GameXplain substantiated the leak even further by supplying an image that looks like it was taken from the event, showing physical copies of the game for all consoles with a fall release window.

There’s no sign of a PC version yet, though Disney did previously release Aladdin, The Lion King, and The Jungle Book on PC via GOG in 2016.

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