Chronicles Of Elyria Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Split Into Two Separate Cases

The class-action suit against Chronicles of Elyria developer Soulbound Studios and third-party payment processing company Xsolla has been split into two lawsuits after the presiding judge approved Xsolla’s motion for non-class arbitration in California under the company’s original terms of service. Meanwhile, the now separate lawsuit against Soulbound Studios, whose headquarters is in Bellevue, Washington, has been transferred to the Western District Court of Washington who will be handling the case going forward.

The class action suit was filed by Chronicles of Elyria backers back in February to recover damages for alleged breach of contract, unfair competition, and violation of the Consumers Legal Remedies Act following reports that the studio had ceased development of the promised game and fired all of its staff in July 2020.

Soulbound Studios CEO Jeromy Walsh later issued a statement that the game had merely been delayed and that he and a small group of volunteers were still actively working on the game. He also maintained that he was under no obligation to deliver the game until it was ready. To add insult to injury, Walsh would later announce a new spinoff game called Kingdoms of Elyria which would be developed alongside the original unreleased game.

The legal drama escalated last month when Soulbound Studios kicked off testing for Kingdoms of Elyria that required participants to sign an NDA. While NDAs are pretty much standard during early testing, this particular one reportedly included a clause that suspiciously sounded like the were effectively signing away their rights to engage in class-action lawsuits against the studio. The NDA was later amended to remove any ambiguity and assuage concerns that it might affect the ongoing lawsuit.

Along with the amended NDA, Soulbound Studios also published a dev blog announcing that they’ve locked down the game’s subreddit due to toxicity and alleged death threats. They also revealed plans to offer NFT land trades to allow players to sell their land claims to other players using cryptocurrency.

Now that we’re all caught up, we can now focus our attentions on that other lawsuit that’s currently making huge waves in the gaming community.