Amid Legal Issues, Rune II is Finally Getting an Update
Shane Black 
The odd journey of Rune II is continuing with the’s announcement that the game is finally receiving an update. Ragnarok, the game’s publisher, has been given access to the resources needed to bring the updates they had promised to the game.
The game was only released a couple of months ago, but its short life has already been incredibly bizarre. The day after it was released, the game’s developer, Human Head Studios, shut down, only for the team to be bought by Zenimax, renamed Roundhouse Studios, and join the Bethesda Softworks family. The publishers of the game, Ragnarok, was left with the responsibility of supporting Rune II, but it lacked the resources needed to do so.
This past month, Ragnarok filed a lawsuit against Human Head for breach of contract and fraudulent concealment, claiming that the studio refused to hand over the source code and assets to the game when they left, which prohibited Ragnarok from delivering the updates.
But this whole ordeal has taken a small step in the right direction, as Ragnarok announced on its official forums that they have received a hard drive containing the game’s source code and assets. They have brought on engineers to make sure that all necessary assets were on the hard drive, adding:
“Currently we have set up a build, test, and staging environment. Once we have confirmed that we are able to make a complete build of the current version of RUNE II (.12L), we are going to begin working on a patch to address the top critical issues, bugs, and optimizations that we have seen reported over the last month and a half.”
While this is good news for the fans of the game, it doesn’t mean the legal issues are done. This battle is still ongoing, with Ragnarok seeking restitution for the game’s development costs and at least $100 million in damages.
Despite this, hopefully this means that the whole situation is trending in the right direction. For those eagerly waiting for Rune II to get big fixes and patches, the light at the end of the tunnel just got slightly brighter. Now, we’ll have to see if Ragnarok truly does have everything it needs.
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