of Digital Mayhem, but with the agreement that Interplay would adopt a more hands-off approach. By this stage, Black Isle had already begun work on Dark Alliance III. The title was cancelled after Interplay failed to retain the license to use the Dungeons & Dragons label from Wizards of the Coast, so Black Isle shifted focus to Fallout 3. They handed in a 95% complete demo, including all game functionality. The next day, however, Interplay, who were several million dollars in debt, with just over $1 million in the bank, began to fire people from Digital Mayhem. Two weeks later, all but two members of the Fallout team were fired. This effectively meant Black Isle Studios no longer existed as anything other than a brand. Apparently, staff were told by Interplay that "we will continue to produce titles. If we feel that a title is worth of the Black Isle Studios' name then it will be released under that brand." On December 18, Interplay denied shutting the studio, claiming "Black Isle Studios remains open with projects pending, the status of Fallout 3 is under review, and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel will ship on January 13." The very next day, December 19, an anonymous former Black Isle employee confirmed to IGN that the studio had been closed, and that although Dark Alliance II would still be released, Fallout 3 and Dark Alliance III had been officially cancelled. On January 5, 2004 Interplay announced that Dark Alliance II was complete and would be released for both PlayStation and Xbox on January 20. Interplay published the game, with Vivendi distributing in North America, and Avalon Interactive distributing in Europe. A remastered version of the game was released on Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on July 20, 2022. Lawsuit In November 2003, Snowblind Studios, developers of the original Dark Alliance and creators of the Dark Alliance engine, filed a lawsuit against Interplay. Snowblind alleged that Interplay had used the game engine in several games without their permission and withheld royalties due from the sale of those games. These games were the GameCube version of the first Dark Alliance game, which was developed by High Voltage Software, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, and Dark Alliance II. The lawsuit was settled on April 19, 2005, and determined that while Interplay could continue to publish materials already