Light & Wonder has addressed investors following a court order to cease operations of its Dragon Train cabinet.
Towards the end of last month, a Nevada District Court ruled in favour of Aristocrat Gaming after the supplier claimed that Light & Wonder’s Dragon Train title copied maths and mechanics from its Dragon Link cabinet.
The prosecutor referred to several employees that had worked on the Dragon Link game leaving to take senior roles at Light & Wonder, preceding the launch of Dragon Train.
Addressing the court order and hoping to rejuvenate support from investors, Light & Wonder President & CEO Matt Wilson appeared on the studio’s YouTube channel to run through several talking points surrounding the “isolated incident”.
“The first area I’d like to address is the North American market,” he said. “We have approximately 33,000 lease units installed in the market and Dragon Train represents a mid-single digit percentage of that install base, or roughly 2,200 units. We’re working very diligently with our customers to convert those games out in compliance with the judge’s order.
“I’m happy to say at this point we’ve not had a single removal request from our customers and we have a line-up of great games from a deep portfolio of franchises, such as Ultimate Fire Link, Invaders, Dancing Drums, Huff ‘n’ Puff, Wizard of Oz and many more that we’re working on from which we can backfill these requests.
“We are working hard with our customers to install these new games as quickly as possible so that Dragon Train is taken out of the fleet, and that’s our immediate priority.”
Wilson then moved onto Australia, where he stated that Dragon Train had “obviously been very successful”. He confirmed that Dragon Train has also been removed from this market and that L&W has offered its clients several alternatives, including “Lion Link, Huff N’ Even More Puff”, and most recently – “the highlight from AGE – Shenlong Unleashed”.
“These games are expected to fill our sales pipeline now,” he continued. “And we’re really looking to make sure that we capture as much of that opportunity in the fourth quarter and beyond as we start to scale these new versions of products.”
The L&W CEO then addressed the studio’s plans for the Dragon Train franchise, outlining an aim to produce a “Dragon Train 2.0” due to the court order only finding infringements in the maths behind the game.
Wilson stated: “Our intention is to build out Dragon Train 2.0 in compliance with the order and we’re working actively on this right now. It’s a very high priority for us and we’re working quickly to get that out.
“When you think about what’s in question here in this order, it’s really a small portion of the overall game that is Dragon Train, it’s just certain aspects of the maths that are being challenged.
“There are a lot of elements in this game that have made it successful. There’s the Dragon Train secondary Hold and Respin feature, the art, the sounds, the animation and the brand. These things are not affected by the order.”
Wilson also addressed the matter of Dragon Train’s designer leaving the company earlier this week, adding: “You might have already seen the news of the departure of Dragon Train’s designer from Light & Wonder. Though we don’t discuss specifics of personnel matters, I can confirm the designer was terminated earlier this week.”
To conclude L&W’s statement to its investors, Wilson suggested that the Dragon Train case is purely an “isolated incident” and stressed that the studio is “going to continue the momentum that you’ve seen at Light & Wonder over the last five years”.