Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Raiden on May 31, 2011, 05:42:52 pm
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From Joystiq:
Fallout Online and several other Interplay-developed titles may be in serious jeopardy, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission report filed by Interplay last week. Develop discovered the filing, which spells out dire financial concerns for the immediate future of the company. Multiple times, the report states:
"If we do not receive sufficient financing or income we may (i) liquidate assets, (ii) sell the company (iii) seek protection from our creditors including the filing of voluntary bankruptcy or being the subject of involuntary bankruptcy, and/or (iv) continue operations, but incur material harm to our business, operations or financial conditions. These conditions, combined with our historical operating losses and our deficits in stockholders' equity and working capital, raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern."
Similarly worrying, the company's current cash balance is approximately $3,000 (yes, that's just three thousand dollars, seriously), and it's operating with nearly $2.9 million in debt. The filing also illuminates the company's shift from paying its developers upfront for projects to working on a "net revenue sharing model," where devs get a cut of the final sales rather than paid when their work is complete. While that model sounds hugely profitable for third-party devs, and has been sporadically successful in the movie business, it seems to signal something less than wonderful in Interplay's case.
Additionally, the company's credit agreement has ended, which Interplay says "has resulted in a substantial reduction in the cash available to finance our operations." Rather than assure investors that everything will work out, the company again warns of potential negative outcomes, saying instead, "There can be no assurance that we will be able to enter into a new credit agreement or that if we do enter into a new credit agreement, it will be on terms favorable to us."
Currently, Interplay has five known projects, ranging from a lawsuit-entangled Fallout MMO to a sparsely detailed Earthworm Jim sequel. Several WiiWare and DSiWare projects are also in the works, though the fate of all five games could be grim given the wording of the company's SEC filing.
Link here: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/31/fallout-onlines-future-in-doubt-as-interplay-crumbles/ (http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/31/fallout-onlines-future-in-doubt-as-interplay-crumbles/)
To be honest I'm always suprised to hear Interplay still even exists. It's still sad though given their part in Freespace's history.
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Yeah, exactly. What's new about this?
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It's not the first time that Interplay has been broke. Last time, they sold/licensed the Fallout IP, and the money from that transaction has kept them afloat until now. My guess is that they'll license or sell the IP for MDK or Earthworm Jim to keep themselves afloat for a few more years, while they cross their fingers that they can win their court battle against Bethesda to get the Fallout MMO on the market to bring in some sustainable revenue.
It's still sad though given their part in Freespace's history.
Pfft. What's sad is that Interplay continues to soldier on. They started spiraling the crapper when they practically killed the Descent and FreeSpace franchises by advertising them so poorly that you had to wonder if they meant to keep D3 and FS2 a secret. They made a bunch of lousy decisions that, by all rights, should have killed the company, and I am personally still waiting for the inevitable.
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They sooner they fold the better. Those people have no idea how to run a business
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As long as they sell their licenses to... whatever publishers their former developers are at now...
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As long as they sell their licenses to... whatever publishers their former developers are at now...
They sold Fallout to Bethesda. I think that should make it pretty clear that whatever trashy company has the most money to offer is the one that will get whatever IP they decide to sell next. "By gamers for gamers," gave way to the company's self-preservation instinct.
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Hey they should change leadership and get the guy that just retired from Volition for a few years... :losthopestillsmoldering:
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Hey they should change leadership and get the guy that just retired from Volition for a few years... :losthopestillsmoldering:
Something tells me that Kulas is worth a bit more than a $3,000 salary. ;)
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If they totally fail, wouldnt that make FS abandonware?
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If they totally fail, wouldnt that make FS abandonware?
Nope, it's sold by GoodOldGames.
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If they totally fail, wouldnt that make FS abandonware?
Nope, it's sold by GoodOldGames.
That's the thing I'm most worried about in all of this. If Interplay does go under, the status of their deal with GOG would be very uncertain, and I'd really really hate to see a fantastic source for Descent and FS dry up.
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Interplay goes belly-up, Freespace IP goes up for grabs, does it not?
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But chances are it won't be THQ who snag it.
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Dunno about you guys, but even if FS3 isn't made by Volition (which would be heresy IMO, but eh), I'd play it anyways. Even if it's pure suck. :nervous:
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In other news, EA bought the rights to the FreeSpace franchise... :warp:
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In other news, EA bought the rights to the FreeSpace franchise... :warp:
That'd actually be pretty cool and would make me very happy.
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In other news, EA bought the rights to the FreeSpace franchise... :warp:
That'd actually be pretty cool and would make me very happy.
I work with EA. Nobody would be happy.
Edit: Also, they still haven't apologized for Command and Conquer
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Yeah C&C4 was a huge and awful botch.
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If they farmed it out to a proper studio and didn't give it to those creeps who thought a redesign was appropriate for the last game in a series...
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[Srsbsns] There was no C&C 4. [/Srsbsns]
Seriously. Tiberium Wars and it's slightly less awesome expansion pack where the last two entries in the franchise in my book.
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[Srsbsns] There was no C&C 4. [/Srsbsns]
Seriously. Tiberium Wars and it's slightly less awesome expansion pack where the last two entries in the franchise in my book.
...aaand that's what we'd be saying of FS2 if EA got FS3, I'm betting. :ick:
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But wasn' tTiberium Wars also developed by EA ,and a reboot of sorts?
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Come on, even ME2 was "made" by EA.
C&C is horrible right now because there's only so much you can milk out of a nineties' genre.
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If Interplay dies can we finally make FS3?
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No, lol. If interplay dies (something that will happen exactly one day after you die, obviously), then they will sell Freespace IP to someone else. And then they'll hold the rights of FS, and nothing will continue to happen.
Forget FS3. Embrace BP or other "continuations".
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[Srsbsns] There was no C&C 4. [/Srsbsns]
Seriously. Tiberium Wars and it's slightly less awesome expansion pack where the last two entries in the franchise in my book.
...aaand that's what we'd be saying of FS2 if EA got FS3, I'm betting. :ick:
EA also did the excellent C&C3 and helped publish ME2. By any sane account they're one of the least repulsive big, stable publishing houses.
Getting mad at EA is so...four years ago. It's the Riccitiello era now.
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THQ would be a good call to buy it up, but i'm curious how much interest there is to buy the Freespace license. However, there are at least several other games that Interplay holds, well, hostage, that deserve to be continued. I believe Planescape Torment was among them for instance.
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THQ doesn't have the policy to buy other's IP.
Really, it's dead. We have buried it long time ago. Let it RIP.
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[Srsbsns] There was no C&C 4. [/Srsbsns]
Seriously. Tiberium Wars and it's slightly less awesome expansion pack where the last two entries in the franchise in my book.
...aaand that's what we'd be saying of FS2 if EA got FS3, I'm betting. :ick:
EA also did the excellent C&C3 and helped publish ME2. By any sane account they're one of the least repulsive big, stable publishing houses.
Getting mad at EA is so...four years ago. It's the Riccitiello era now.
I don't mean that. How would you like to have FS3 tied to your EA account like Crysis? Would EA even allow GOG.com to keep selling FS2 / FS1 for cheap with no DRM? EA IIRC breathes DRM. Right?
EDIT: Not to mention, would they bother to allow FS3 to be easily modded? Although in that respect AFAIK they are pretty good, I hear the Crysis editor is fabulous, so probably no worries there.
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There are at least several other games that Interplay holds, well, hostage, that deserve to be continued. I believe Planescape Torment was among them for instance.
Oh, lordy.... Torment is a whole can of worms unto itself. It's effectively just as stalemated as FreeSpace or Descent, not because the Torment IP is split, but because Atari has the exclusive publishing license for games utilizing anything D&D (except for the Baldur's Gate series, which I believe Interplay is free to continue - hence the old Dark Alliance games, which had nothing to do with the BG series but bore the name anyway).
Really, though, Torment was a closed story arc. A sequel could only hope to feel tacked-on, at best. The Planescape setting definately deserves some more attention, as it is always a welcome change-of-pace from the rather overused (in cRPGs at least) Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk settings. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on what you think of Atari's ambitions/capabilities), I don't think that Atari would have to interact with Interplay or even make any further agreements with Wizards of the Coast in order to utilize the Planescape setting, so long as the game isn't directly related to Torment.
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I don't mean that. How would you like to have FS3 tied to your EA account like Crysis?
To my recollection Crysis doesn't have any DRM (ed: on steam, iirc) beyond a five simultaneous activation limit. You can also get it on Steam, which yes, I would absolutely love.
EA IIRC breathes DRM. Right?
You remember incorrectly. EA's DRM policies are much less restrictive than those of companies like Ubisoft.
EDIT: Not to mention, would they bother to allow FS3 to be easily modded? Although in that respect AFAIK they are pretty good, I hear the Crysis editor is fabulous, so probably no worries there.
It seems like you're confusing publishers and developers here. EA is a publisher. They can lean on developers but do not make games themselves except via their studios. Crysis is a game by CryTek, which is an EA studio.
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Hmmm.... right, but how much control does a publisher have? IIRC M$ is the publisher for Halo, and Bungie is a Microsoft Studio. Crappy Halo 2 PC port, no Halo 3 PC port, I don't think those were Bungie decisions, I think M$ was trying to $ell XBOXes and told Bungie no.
Sound correct?
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Bungie is now an independent studio with a publishing agreement with Activision. And of course publishers have a degree of control (though I doubt Bungie had any interest in or ability to develop those games for PC on its own), but if a publisher's going to have control it's better to have EA than someone like Activision or Ubisoft.
Volition works for the financially shaky THQ.
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I actually have nothing but good things to say about EA at the moment, even given the aforementioned C&C4 debacle which had a multitude of reasons for occurring well outside EA's hands. I never understood why THAT was the one publisher everybody **** on. Do we just conveniently not notice groups like Activision or something?
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It's because EA was worth ****ting on prior to about 2007 and then got its **** together, and that news hasn't reached everyone yet.
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Ah. I see. I didn't realize they'd turned around. I have Crysis cause it's awesome, but I've always heard EA was terrible, and I know that I had a retarded time with Battlefield 2142 cause the person who sold it to me had previously played it... it ended up (after long and useless dialogs with support) that he had to give me his account and I had to use that (fortunately, he had not activated any other games on that account). At which point I decided that EA was not such a great company.
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As to THQ's financial situation, they just lost a few million dollars betting on Company of Heroes Online. It was a stupid attempt to make the quite good RTS Company of Heroes into a F2P micro-transaction Korean-style MMORTS. Not surprisingly, it failed hard in the American market. Its status in Korea is currently unknown to me.
I predict similar epic fail for End of Nations, an MMORTS with a monthly fee by Petroglyph. I honestly don't know what those guys at Petroglyph are smoking to think people will pay a monthly fee to play an RTS game.
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Yeah, that's true. I hope THQ doesn't go under though, they've been a pretty good publisher and less 'hands on' as I recall.
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EA also did the excellent C&C3 and helped publish ME2. By any sane account they're one of the least repulsive big, stable publishing houses.
Getting mad at EA is so...four years ago. It's the Riccitiello era now.
Yeah, it's a lot like the still-strong Derek Smart hate even after the guy's calmed down a lot and generally gotten pretty cool. He's not really even a bad developer, he has some great ideas. He just doesn't have the manpower to implement a lot of his ideas.
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EA also did the excellent C&C3 and helped publish ME2. By any sane account they're one of the least repulsive big, stable publishing houses.
Getting mad at EA is so...four years ago. It's the Riccitiello era now.
Yeah, it's a lot like the still-strong Derek Smart hate even after the guy's calmed down a lot and generally gotten pretty cool. He's not really even a bad developer, he has some great ideas. He just doesn't have the manpower to implement a lot of his ideas.
There is a difference, though: Derek Smart came here and acted super-dickish directly to us, then badmouthed us in the press. The quality of the games he makes has little to do with why many members of the FS-community still dislike him. Much of the hate for him is on a personal level and still justified, to an extent, as he's never apologized for any of it, nor has he ever returned to interact with the community in a positive manner. You might call it arrogant to lay the expectation upon him to take time out of his schedule to apologize to us for anything, but he took the time out of his schedule to make several long-winded posts about how little he cared for us in the first place, so five minutes (or seconds for that matter) to bang out, "I am sorry for my previous, immature behavior and hope that the FreeSpace community can find it in their hearts to forgive me," doesn't feel like asking too much. Then, we could go back to judging him strictly as a game developer.
By contrast, EA made some bad business decisions a few years back and has since endeavored to correct their course. It was never personal with EA, and even if it had been, the company has had a change of leadership, so any remaining grudge with the company is woefully mistargeted. EA has done what they needed to do in order to redeem themselves. Derek Smart still has a big step to take to properly resolve remaining grievances between himself and many members of our community.
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as he's never apologized for any of it,
True.
nor has he ever returned to interact with the community in a positive manner.
Not true. He has been back. It was all pretty civil.
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He did come back and he was indeed pretty cool. In fact things were going quite well until certain HLP members started giving him guff. Then he just packed up and left instead of retaliating.
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Soooooo what did he do to infuriate people so much? (not much aware of this part of HLP history)
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At one point, he wanted to buy the rights to the FS franchise. The relevant
threadflamewar can be found in the Classics section. He also had a reputation for storming into every forum where his name was mentioned, flaming people, and leaving again (Back when the internet was small, and his games moderately successful, or at least, moderately known).
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At one point, he wanted to buy the rights to the FS franchise. The relevant threadflamewar can be found in the Classics section.
Yeah. As I recall, he didn't even start the **** with the FreeSpace fans here, they started it with him while he retaliated that time.
EDIT: In fact, what seems to be close to bashing him for several, several pages before he has his first post can be found in the classics section.
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I'll have a look into it. I like flamewar voyeurism.
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He did come back and he was indeed pretty cool. In fact things were going quite well until certain HLP members started giving him guff. Then he just packed up and left instead of retaliating.
Ah. I may have been inactive at the time, then. If that's the case, then Hades' analogy is better than I thought.
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Well it didn't happen, and until someone from HLP gets the lottery, I don't think that the current "status quo" will ever change.
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[Srsbsns] There was no C&C 4. [/Srsbsns]
Seriously. Tiberium Wars and it's slightly less awesome expansion pack where the last two entries in the franchise in my book.
...aaand that's what we'd be saying of FS2 if EA got FS3, I'm betting. :ick:
EA also did the excellent C&C3 and helped publish ME2. By any sane account they're one of the least repulsive big, stable publishing houses.
Getting mad at EA is so...four years ago. It's the Riccitiello era now.
Dragon Age 2
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Blame the developer, not the publisher. That was ALL Bioware, as far as I've read.
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It could be the case that they were rushed to do the job by EA.
Perhaps it motivated EA to delay ME3 to get it "top notch".
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THQ would be a good call to buy it up, but i'm curious how much interest there is to buy the Freespace license. However, there are at least several other games that Interplay holds, well, hostage, that deserve to be continued. I believe Planescape Torment was among them for instance.
For the record, the Planescape IP (and any other D&D setting) is the property of Wizards of the Coast, not Interplay. Considered the franchise has been buried officially in the last century, I doubt we'll be seeing anything vaguely related to Planescape ever again.
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To my recollection Crysis doesn't have any DRM (ed: on steam, iirc) beyond a five simultaneous activation limit. You can also get it on Steam, which yes, I would absolutely love.
One thing the original Crysis was notorious for was a DRM scheme would actually break a legitimately purchased DVD's installation process. That's right, you could go out and pay $50 for a game and have it NOT work because the publisher wanted to punish you for daring to buy their product. Granted that was 2007.