Interesting Mustawd v2, do you have any idea if this has ever been brought up in an interview with Mr. Wells Fargo?
I don't know if it has. To be honest, I'd be surprised if the not payong royalties part was truly an accident. It kind of smells like they intentionally did it to save some money. As an accountant, not paying royalties when due is beyond retarded. Let me explain why:
Royalties works both ways. In other words not only is there accounting on behalf of the company who buys the license to the IP, but the licensing company also has accounting setup to record the royalty revenue.
Oftentimes, the licensee (e.g. Interplay) will send quarterly or even monthly royalty reports to the licensor (D&D owner). These reports outline how much was sold etc and how much royalty is owed. So it's not like one day someone woke up at Wotc or Tsr or whoever owned D&D and said "OMFG guys! Interplay totally owes us royalties, lah!!"
More than likely what happened was that Interplay, probably strapped for cash, decided to sit on it, didn't send out royalty funds, and likely ignored repeated attempts by wotc/tsr/whoever to contact them about it. Fed up, wotc/tsr/whatever then probably invoked legal cause in the licensing agreement to pull the license rights cuz they were tired of Herv's shit.
Ignoring communications is actually not that uncommon with companies who are going bankrupt. Everyone and their mother wants to get paid what's due and they be all "yah, we're almost outta money bro, so we're gonna ghost you". Not sure if Interplay was in bankruptcy proceedings at that point though.
I mean all this is speculation ofc. I'd have to look at some of the 2003 and 2004 10Qs to get a better sense of the financial condition they were in. But meh. I'm too busy working my ass off right now.
EDIT: Looks like Fairfax's post comfirms my suspicion.
