Develop have revealed the details of Halo developer Bungie's new ten-year contract with Activision. The studio split away from Microsoft in 2010 and left the Halo franchise behind them.

The contract contains an unusual demand that major FPS developers Valve, Epic and Gearbox are banned from developing any games in Bungie's new Destiny franchise. We're not sure why this needs to be prevented as Valve and Epic are not in the habit of developing games within the IPs of other well-established studios and though Gearbox have done work in both Valve's and Bungie's IPs before they are now a major studio in their own right with their own franchises.

Otherwise the contract outlines plans for Destiny and a spin-off series codenamed Comet. It also stipulates that there are to be four games in each series released between 2013 and 2020. Bungie are allowed to keep the rights to the Destiny franchise but cannot publish it with anyone other than Activsion until 2022. They are allowed to commit up to five percent of their staff to prototype a new Marathon game and if they make Activision enough money the are free to start working on it and other non-Activision published products with up to twenty five percent of their staff.

The contract also contains many clauses designed to protect Activison such as a number of escape clauses that allow them to terminate the contract or take control of the Destiny IP if Bungie fail to meet expectations.

You can read the rest of the contract details here.

Source: The Escapist