New developments have occurred this week in the controversy between Tim Langdell of Edge Games and Mobigame, small independent developer (two people!) of critically acclaimed, yet commercially unavailable, Edge.

Earlier this week, Time Langdell authored an open-letter to Mobigame, stating his side of the issue.  Mobigame responded, essentially calling the letter a pack of lies, claiming that Langdell has posted email conversations that never occurred and has fudged the truth on a number of issues, including Mobigame’s offer to rename their game to “Edgy.”

In point three of Langdell’s letter, he even admits in an update posted August 12 that he altered the wording of David Papazian’s (of Mobigame) email.

Read on for the rest of Langdell's shenanigans -- the controversy only heats up!

A TIGSource reader has also discovered a discrepancy with Langdell’s statement.  Langdell claims to have only ever sued one company “well over a decade ago” over the Edge trademark, yet later in the letter claims to have “sued and won” over the Edge trademark “late last year.”  Well, which is it?  Inconsistent statements of fact such as this should put much of Langdell’s statement into question.

This IGDA (International Game Developers Association) forum thread is well worth keeping up-to-date on, as members of the organization dissatisfied with his position on the board of directors have taken it upon themselves to address Langdell’s recent actions.

One issue that cropped up in the thread was that of Edge’s game Racers, which is “coming soon” for PS3 and PC, with the Xbox 360, Wii, and iPhone versions to follow afterward.

The interesting thing about Edge’s page for Racers is that the screenshots appear to be completely lifted from another game called Voltage published by Lexicon Entertainment and developed by IBA Group, a Czech Republic developer who has already released the game.  The game’s trailer, dated December of 2007, makes no mention of Edge Games but we can clearly see the vehicles shown in the trailer match those on Langdell’s Racers page.

While it’s possible that since Lexicon Entertainment appears to be a dead entity that Edge Games picked up the already released title to distribute it elsewhere, I think this is rather unlikely to be the case.

The “new” screenshots (as the Edge Games front page claims) on Edge’s Racers page match those from an article written in May of 2008 about a game already released nearly a year ago, yet Edge Games claims the game is “coming soon.”  Furthermore, the careful eyes over at TIGSource noticed that Edge Games didn’t announce Racers until June of this year.

The whole mess looks like another one of Langdell’s attempts to make Edge Games appear to still be operating within the games industry.

This is only one example.  Research into Edge’s claim to a game called Mythora and a “coming soon” sequel Mythora 2 again reveal more questions than answers.  Mythora appears to also be called The Banished, and was developed and published by Frontline Studios a number of years ago.  How is it that Edge Games developed and published the title, then?

What is the development status regarding Mythora 2?  Teenage Wasteland is another questionable one, having again only been announced in June of this year, with no other information available, no even on the Edge Games website.

What does this all mean?  I’ll reiterate some of what I wrote in my initial article on this subject.  I’m not a lawyer, so I cannot say definitively whether or not Langdell’s actions fun afoul of trademark laws, but my personal opinion is that Langdell is engaging in predatory trademark litigation which stifles innovation and creativity in the games industry.

The convincing evidence that Langdell has been covering his ass by making Edge Games appear to still be actively engaged in the development and publishing of games since the Mobigame/Edge Games conflict went public only makes him look sleazy.  The fact that Langdell is on the board of directors for the IGDA should give us all pause.

This is a man who sits on the board of an organization which is committed to “advanc[ing] the careers and enhanc[ing] the lives of game developers.”  How have Langdell’s actions done either?  In light of these events, this is no longer just a legal issue but an ethical one.