I would guess that they went to Chris & Gregg asking for something similar. The directors probably gave the owners an ultimatum, "Give us some level of product ownership, or we are leaving". When the owners called their bluff, they found out that the directors weren't bluffing.

That's just my guess.

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Anabolic has a well established business model, distribution channels and cash flow/profit structure. They need to invest less than $X in production costs for a new title, and sell Y pieces of it to be profitable. They have been following this type of formula for years.

Now there's a new studio/distributor in town that was set up from the inception with the idea of providing "ownership" of product to its directors. "Ownership" can mean a lot of different things. It can imply copyright retention, profit sharing, legal liability, etc. In this particular case I assume it means that the directors are getting a cut of profits after production costs are recouped.

As a new company it's easy to plan for x% of net profit being paid to the director. You build it into the pricing model, company overhead and amortization of production costs. It's incredibly difficult for an existing company, with a somewhat fixed cost of operations to suddenly be asked to give up a significant chunk of cash flow because that's what the new kid in town is doing.

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The only Anabolic director I will miss is Jean Yves Lecastel.

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