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In a recently unearthed court document, obtained by Kotaku , Trendy claims its ex-creative director, Jeremy Stieglitz, is in breach of a previously signed contract.Trendy’s lawyers allege Stieglitz had agreed to several conditions to secure his exit from Trendy in 2014. Those conditions, according to Trendy, included not attempting to poach staff from the company, and not creating direct competition.Trendy argues that Ark is both direct competition, and its development has seen staff move from Trendy to Wildcard.In a separate article by Kotaku, three years prior, staff members at Trendy allegedly reached out to complain about their working conditions under the helm of Stieglitz. Following the publishing of the aforementioned article, Stieglitz was moved off his team, and later headed up a new imprint at Trendy, NomNomGames, to work on a different title.Further problems at NomNomGames led to Trendy agreeing upon Stieglitz’s release from his contract under a few caveats. Namely, his non-compete clause would be reduced from three years to just one. This clause meant Stieglitz would not be allowed to create anything that could damage Trendy financially, like, say, making a video game. The non-compete clause would have expired on August of 2015.Stieglitz’s exit from the company is when the alleged problems began. On August 18, 2014, while still under the non-compete clause, Trendy claims Stieglitz approached staff with the hopes of them joining him on a new project. Trendy then responded by sending Stieglitz a cease and desist letter.Trendy also believes Stieglitz and Wildcard used technology and information from Trendy during the development of Ark. If true, that could potentially make Ark the intellectual property of Trendy rather than Wildcard.However, Wildcard contends that Stieglitz wasn’t a full-time part of the team during Ark’s development. Wildcard co-founder Jesse Rapczak told Kotaku he and Stieglitz went to college together, and that Stieglitz had consulted on Ark, but he hasn’t joined the team yet.Trendy’s lawyers mention that the other co-founder, Susan Stieglitz – Jeremy Stieglitz’s wife – used her maiden name when registering Wildcard as a company, but her bakery in Gainesville, Florida, makes use of her married name, Stieglitz. The accusation here is that Susan used her maiden name to try and hide the connection between Wildcard and Jeremy Stieglitz.Wildcard are seeking for the case to dismissed, stating: “Trendy’s Complaint reads more like a salacious tabloid story than a short and plain statement of the ultimate facts [...] Many of the allegations are disparaging and included simply to be provocative. They are irrelevant, immaterial, impertinent, and scandalous. As such, these allegations should be stricken.”The case is currently ongoing. At this time, Trendy is trying to get an injunction in the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, set to take place on April 27. Should the court rule in favour of Trendy, there’s a possibility Ark may be pulled from Steam while the courts hammer out who exactly is responsible for the creation of Ark: Trendy or Wildcard.IGN has reached out to both Trendy Entertainment and Studio Wildcard for respective statements, and we’ll update this story should either party reply.

Wesley Copeland is a freelance news writer who writes terrible bios. For more obvious statements and video game chat, you should probably follow him on Twitter