There's a bit of a brouhaha brewing between SCi and Hungarian developers MGE and Mithis Entertainment. Over the weekend The Sunday Times reported that Eidos was being investigated by police in Hungary over allegations that the company stole software from them, including source code for Battlestations: Midway, and sabotaged their computers.

The paper quotes Dr Versitz Piroska, the lawyer acting for MGE and Mithis, as saying: "A number of complaints have been filed with the Budapest police with regard to the illegal removal of software and hardware connected to the Battlestations: Midway, Joint Task Force and other games... [with complaints of] unlawful penetration into Mithis' computers, copying, sabotage and deletion of games' data and infringement of IP rights."

According to The Sunday Times, Budapest police have confirmed the basic details of the story, indicating that two investigations are proceeding on two separate subjects: "on suspicion of breaching of authorship rights law."

Today, SCi seemingly issued a statement saying that the newspaper may be confused, but doesn't appear to actually deny what the newspaper reported.

In a statement given to Gamasutra by SCi head of communications, Chris Glover, the company suggests that The Sunday Times has confused the games Battlestations: Midway and Joint Task Force as a single title and that the majority of complaints referred to in the article do not therefore relate to Battlestations: Midway. Indeed SCi suggest that there ware no specific allegations against the company.

SCi has admitted that in November 2005 the company exercised its contractual right to take over development of the game, following dissatisfaction with MGE. According to SCi, MGE then demanded compensation and when none was forthcoming made an official complaint to the authorities in Budapest, relating to the ownership of intellectual property rights.

Jane Cavanagh, CEO of SCi Entertainment said; "We would never normally comment upon such relatively minor matters and have only done so to clarify the position. We wish to correct what we believe are a number of misleading statements and material inaccuracies, particularly in this instance as allegations raised in the article appear to relate to a totally different and unrelated company or companies."

In my experience, when a company is under investigation for illegal hacking, theft and sabotage and they didn't do it, they usually just say so.

Very odd stuff going on over there. Brian Crecente

Breaking: SCi Denies Theft Reports on Battlestations: Midway [Gamasutra]