We received the following press release. --RL Today GAMA is pleased to announce the amicable settling of its Origins contract with Wizards of the Coast Inc. In this contract Wizards of the Coast was to manage Origins through 2005. As announced last December, they will no longer manage Origins as of July 9, 2001. Intense negotiations ensued, and an agreement was nearly signed in February. After Wizards of the Coast unilaterally cancelled those negotiations GAMA formed a Litigation Committee to manage the dispute on GAMA's behalf. GAMA attorney handled negotations with an outside counsel of Wizards of the Coast. If these negotiations had broken down GAMA intended to bring the matter to arbitration, as GAMA very much wanted to avoid any lawsuit as being detrimental to both parties. Final verbiage of the settlement agreement came together over the past few weeks. On July 7 GAMA received a signed copy of the agreement, which it has in turn signed. In this agreement Wizards of the Coast has paid GAMA to settle their contract, plus taken on all expenses related to an ongoing lawsuit which GAMA, WotC and other related parties were mutually name defendants in, regarding the termination of a previous GAMA Executive Director. That lawsuit, incidentally, was settled about two weeks ago. This frees GAMA and others from a long-standing pending obligation, removing a barrier to GAMA's fiscal health. GAMA has agreed to assume all venue contracts in Columbus related to Origins, and Wizards of the Coast has agreed to provide manifold documentation related to Origins operations, including the key attendees address database. GAMA has now assumed control of all aspects of Origins. GAMA invites Wizards of the Coast and all other game manufacturers to attend and exhibit at all future Origins, the Industry's North American Showcase convention. Back to 3rd Quarter 2001 List of News Items Back to Master List of News Items Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Coalition Web, Inc. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com