Loki Aftermath Looks Bad

einer writes "Things look mighty bad for Loki employees. From this article it appears that some of them haven't seen a paycheck since late 2000. Perhaps the most telling part of the article is contained in a parenthetical near the bottom of the page: "A single employee is listed in creditor filings as being owed almost $350,000 in unpaid salary and in expenses the company incurred using the employee's credit card."" there's a lot of not-so-happy-stuff in this article.

Comments

Open Books!

[zulux]

The key to not having your suppliers/employees leave at the first sign of trouble is having open accounting in your company. I'm run a small consulting firm - and had a cash crunch a few years ago, and *nobody* cared because all my books were open. Everything. Salary, expenses, capital items, AP, AR. Even contracts for all/upcoming jobs. Everything. If you looked at the books you could see that I just planned improperly - I ran out and got a personal loan, and all was well a month later.

The gratest thing about open books, is that you don't have to lie. And you can't fool yourself into thinking things are better than they are.

So much for the "Please Support Loki" campaign

[erat]

At the risk of being flamed, I have to say this:

What do you think of darling Loki now??

Linux gamers flocked to these forums pleading with people -- even non-gamers -- to buy something from Loki so they could stay afloat. Hopefully this will show that blind loyalty to a platform (Linux, Windows, who cares? They're all OSes, not religions) is sometimes misguided. If I would have temporarily dropped my who-cares-about-games-on-Linux stance and bought something from Loki, I'm guessing I would have only been supporting the allegedly crooked Draeker clan instead of supporting the company.

Sorry, but supporting a friggin' IP lawyer like Draeker isn't my idea of money well spent. The best we can hope for at this point is that the Draekers carry all of the guilt (if it's proven they're guilty) without dragging down Linux. I would think that's possible. The guy sounds like the s**t that s**t scrapes off its shoes. Folks who run companies and end up screwing the folks that made their business work deserve whatever hell that's dished out for them.

Stop yelling at the employees

[AT Tappman]

Ok, I've seen a few replies stating that Loki employees should have just left when they didn't get money and that they were stupid not to leave. I can't not reply to that kind of misinformed response.

Having talked with several employees that worked for Loki, I feel I can honestly say that several of them were terribly idealistic and sold on the idea that Linux had a bright future on the desktop. Not only that, but that Loki was at the forefront of capitalizing on that bright future and that happy days were just around the corner. For someone that has even a modicum of idealism and a love for Linux and the future of free software, this wasn't hard to believe. Just look at the timeline and you can see that in the first year, things looked amazingly positive. Several games published. Quake 3 Arena in tin boxes. UT also being published (albeit not by Loki) just added more credence to the idea that Linux and the idea of Linux gaming were coming of age quickly.

As has been said before, Loki did several things correctly. That is, if a company has to appeal to the Linux community, then they should follow Loki's lead. Contacts in IRC and on newsgroups. Good tech support. The whole crazy LokiHack idea. They were all great ideas and pulled the community into the SDURF (Scott Draeker Un-Reality Field). If you have ever visited these forums where Lokiites could be found, you would have found out how enthusiastic everyone was about what was going on. These people believed and were willing to be poor but doing what they loved to make it happen.

Unfortunately, Loki seems to have been terribly mismanaged. It is unwise to go into details, but suffice to say that it could not sustain itself with the leadership that it had. Look at the timeline again, and you can see when people started to give up and leave for real paying employment. Look at the frequency of games after the beginning of 2000. Look at the SMAC debacle. Look at the crap that was released at the end (i.e. Postal Plus). Sadly, some gave up later than others, and suffered even more for that sacrifice.

Sometimes a dream means more than money or even family. In the case of Loki, it appears that those dreams were sold and exploited, hurting both the talented people that ported the games and provided the support and the people in the Linux community that bought the products. On a larger scale, the image of Linux has been tarnished as well, and it will make it even harder to move on from this fall.