A bidding war has broken out over the rights to a pair of games created by shuttered videogame developer TimeGate Studios Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported today. Hedge fund CNH Partners, an affiliate of Greenwich, Conn.’s AQR Capital Partners, said that it made a higher offer for the rights to two of TimeGate first-person shooter titles — “Section 8” and the unreleased “Minimum.” According to court papers, CNH teamed with game developer Digital Tribe Games to offer $50,000 in cash plus a 25 percent royalty on the two games, topping a winning bid by France’s Atari SA. SouthPeak Interactive Corp., which won a multimillion-dollar arbitration award against TimeGate in their dispute over “Section 8,” also says its offer — $40,000 and a 50 percent royalty — is better than Atari’s, which tried to unload some of its U.S. assets in bankruptcy court earlier this year. The bankruptcy trustee winding down TimeGate has endorsed the Atari bid, but the hedge fund is asking a bankruptcy judge to reopen the sale process and to schedule a live auction.
