As reported by VentureBeat on Tuesday, August 19, Halo and Destiny developer Bungie has been ordered to return company shares to Halo composer Marty O’Donnell, who was fired from the studio without a given reason back in April.
According to court documents, an arbitrator (an independent individual who’s officially assigned to settle disputes) said in a preliminary injunction that Bungie made a mistake when it stripped music and audio from O’Donnell founder’s shares. Due to the success of the Halo franchise, the shares are said to be extremely valuable.
When Bungie fired O’Donnell, he declared that he would sue the studio, and so he filed an arbitration claim against the developer and its chief executive Harold Ryan. The arbitrator herself, retired judge Sharon Armstrong at JAMS, Inc. in Seattle, was the one who responded to O’Donnell’s request.
Though the final order has yet to be issued, O’Donnell also previously sued Bungie for unpaid wages relating to overtime and compensation, and was rewarded $95,000 following the legal proceedings .
According to the report, the arbitrator has found that O’Donnell has demonstrated substantial likelihood of proving he was one of the seven founding members of Bungie, and that the studio gave him 1.27 million shares of class B shares in October 2007. Those shares were then converted into 336,375 shares of Bungie’s Series B-1 Preferred Stock back in 2010.
O’Donnell was also offered 48,000 shares of Bungie’s common stock, and in December of 2010 he signed a contract that extended his employment with the studio through to 2020. An agreement held by the contract said that he would give up his founder’s shares if he left Bungie voluntarily.
You can read the full report on the matter via the source link below. We’ll bring you more news on Marty O’Donnell and Bungie should further information reach our ears.
[ VentureBeat ]