The plot thickens. Double Fine, developers of the upcoming Brutal Legend, filed a countersuit against Activision, who are suing to block the game’s October release. News of that suit hit during E3, and struck a lot of people (most notably the game’s creator Tim Schafer) as sour grapes. Activision had the chance to publish Legend when it bought Vivendi, but chose not to. Now it seems that one of the reasons they made that choice was because they couldn’t shoehorn it into their prolific Guitar Hero franchise. At least, that’s what it says in the suit, as reported by Yahoo! News (as linked from Joystiq).

If true, I officially have zero sympathy for Activision. It’s one thing for them to pull a George Costanza and pretend they didn’t quit on Brutal Legend. It’s another for them to have dropped the game in the first place because they couldn’t turn Tim Schafer’s baby into the thousandth entry in an “annualizable” franchise. That is so not rock ‘n’ roll!