Telltale Co-Founder Explains Jurassic Park Jeep Scandal

With its Jurassic Park: The Game slated for release tomorrow, Telltale Games must be cursing the timing of a new scandal that has surfaced around alleged damage done to a Jeep they paid to have delivered to the Penny Arcade Expo. The company's co-founder has stepped forward to give his point of view on the events.

The origins of this story come from JurassicJeep.com, a site devoted to vehicles made to look like those from the popular film. The site posted a blog today accusing Telltale of damaging their Jeep (pictured above) and refusing to pay to have it repaired. The post explains that the Jeep was loaned out to Telltale for the Penny Arcade Expo but was returned with heavy damages.

The story blew up on Reddit, which is where Telltale co-founder Kevin Bruner chose to post a response. According to Bruner, the damages took place while the vehicle was in transit, and the Telltale staff thought it was natural damage from the vehicle's life.

Bruner also said that Telltale hasn't refused to pay for the damages -- rather, the developer has been going through the normal insurance channels, a process which apparently has been slow. Given the anger in the original posting, Bruner is now offering to cut the Jeep's owner a personal check to pay for damages.

This is clearly a messy situation, but I find it hard to believe that Telltale would willingly endanger its credibility by avoiding payment that they didn't think the insurance company was going to make. What do you think?