After Realtime Worlds CEO, David Jones, described himself as being “miffed” that Ruffian Games became developer of Crackdown 2, the studio tells us its side of the story in an interview published on Edge today.

Producer Jim Cope claims it “still maintain[s] a really strong working relationship with Realtime; they’re our neighbours in both personal and professional relationships, and we like that. But leaping to our defence, in a sense, we firmly believe we’re the right people to make Crackdown 2.”

Billy Thomson, creative director for Ruffian Games, echoes the sentiment, talking about the team’s strong ties to the first Crackdown: “Close to half of our team worked on the original game. We’ve got core members from every discipline who worked on it, the majority of the design team, and, depending on whom you speak to, some of the best coders and most talented artists. But there are still guys at Realtime we want to be friends with, so we don’t want to get dragged into a slanging match.”

The team is committed to addressing the “biggest issues” from the first game and claims it has an “incredibly strong vision of what Crackdown 2 is.”