The founders of Harmonix, developers of Rock Band, have sued their parent company Viacom over unpaid bonuses with recent Rock Band games. Harmonix was acquired by MTV and Viacom just before the first Rock Band game became a huge success.

Harmonix founders claim their deal had them awarded a share of the profit of the Rock Band franchise over $32 million, but Viacom did what’s known as “Hollywood accounting”, meaning they shuffled money around and made deals so that Rock Band technically never made a profit. Even though it grossed hundreds of millions of dollars.

When a developer makes a limited edition version of their game it is assumed that that means there will be no more made after the initial batch and this holds true with the limited edition version of The Beatles: Rock Band. Taking this into consideration, it is best that you hurry up and buy the $249 bundle (which comes with Ringo Starr drums and a Paul McCartney bass) as Viacom’s CEO, Phillip Dauman, has recently told GI.biz that he expects the Limited Edition to completely sell out by November.

This assumption was made after the company realized that 25% of their entire stock of the limited edition was exhausted in its first week on store shelves.

There’s really no telling if these will sell out sooner or later than Mr. Dauman’s prediction so it is probably a good idea to go out and buy it as soon as possible.

Fighting back with a vengeance, Harmonix owner Viacom is counter-suing Konami over Rock Revolution. Konami has long claimed that it holds the patents to rhythm games, having started the genre with Guitar Freaks and DrumMania games. The publisher sued Harmonix last year, claiming that Rock Band amounted to patent infringement.

Now, Viacom is fighting back in a countersuit, stating that Harmonix’s games are improvements over Konami’s original patent and that Rock Revolution has more in common with Rock Band than Konami’s past rhythm games.

Viacom is seeking damages and a motion to stop Konami from selling Rock Revolution.

Who says good ideas don’t bring in money? Just point them to Harmonix founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, both of whom have been given $300 million from parent-company Viacom as bonus.

The duo, who started the studio way back in 1995, received $150 million last quarter for more than stellar sales of Rock Band 2; they are also due another payment “exceeding $150 million” next year.

"We may not have anticipated the payment would be that high, but it’s based on what they have achieved," said Viacom spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew.

Performance-based bonuses are nothing new, but damn, this is a lot of money!