Please lets not get personal. If you disagree with thunder, disagree on the facts.
The fun pimps have said (after giving out an initial press release) that they won't say anything more about the matter before they have something definite to say. So there are no details and probably we won't get any more until they publish one with either "success" or "sorry" in the title. Others have tried with constant nagging and failed to elicit anything at all. It is just a theory of mine that their lawyer insisted on silence as long as there are legal matters or negotiations underway.
If nobody is giving out false information then these are facts:
1) TFP have a roadbloack in the way, and it was hinted of being of a legal nature
2) There was an auction with a deadline in April/May for Telltale's assets (and in a legal sense assets may mean rights, code or even physical possesions). In this auction 7D2Ds assets (whatever they were) were sold to someone who wanted to remain anonymous.
3) After the auction TFP still wasn't able to give a definite "yes" or "no" about a further console version
4) TFP also terminated the licence agreement with Telltale. (
https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?93089-Telltale-Update)
and these are assumptions and guesses:
1) the legal problems could be some disagreement, question of law, something they need to buy to proceed or difficult negotiations.
2) Since TFP specifically mentioned the auction before they shut up about the matter, there was something in the auction they wanted.
3) TFP terminated the licence, but the contract will really say what that means. One possible problem could be that TFPs laywers and Telltale disagree what that really means in detail
4) What is questionable to have transfered back is
a) publishing rights for console version 1.0 that is out on the consoles for years, since Telltale probably would not allow a small company like TFP to have a powerful way to ransom them immediately after version 1.0 is out, i.e. "give us more licencing money or we terminate the licence and you never see any money out of it". There still might be language in the contract that the rights transfer back in case of bankruptcy or sale of the company.
b) the code IG produced (which was a nearly finished update), since that was fully paid by telltales money. Again Telltale would be mad to sign a contract where TFP could just get the code for naught by terminating the licence.
4a) It might even possible that a new company who won the auction could publish a new console version or something labeled as a big update patch (if the contract was ambiguous or incomplete) but this is very unlikely (otherwise terminating the licence would have absolutely no consequences at all)
5) So TFP wanted either future publishing rights or the code back through the auction. The former only if terminating the licence didn't really work at all (4a) or there are (weird) special circumstances with console publishing that need TFP to have the licence for 1.0 too.