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Acclaim Reports Large Loss, May Face Bankruptcy
Thanks to Yahoo!/Reuters for its story revealing videogame publisher Acclaim Entertainment has announced a quarterly loss of $25.4 million, and warned of possible bankruptcy, since "needs new cash to replace a financing agreement... that expires on Aug. 4." Apparently the company "has signed a letter of intent with a different lender to borrow up to $30 million but the deal has not yet been completed." The long-standing publisher has also recently been sued by the Olsen Twins, although it still lists upcoming titles as including 100 Bullets, The Red Star, Worms Forts: Under Siege!, and Interview With A Made Man. Update: 07/03 01:34 GMT by S : Acclaim's 10-K financial statement reveals "notification from The Major League Baseball Player's Association (MLBPA) that we were late in making certain royalty payments and our license was terminated", and "due to failure to make certain royalty payments relating to the videogame title Turok: Evolution... our [Turok intellectual property] license agreement with Classic Media was terminated."
Worms is a great game. I hope it doesn't die.
The olsen twins won their lawsuit. Yep. They won the case and took everything acclaim had. God bless those sexy bitches.
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To be honest, they haven't done *anything* worth playing lately except for the Burnout series, which has now been taken over by EA.
While any developers who lose their jobs due to Acclaim's demise have my sympathies, Acclaim's departure from the scene will not be a Bad Thing for the gaming industry.
Quite the opposite in fact....
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Obviously, Acclaim was a poorly managed company(who would actually make Olsen twins games!), so it might actually be a good thing if they went under. If they go under, their creditors will probably want to sell any assets that the company has of value, and that may very well include works in progress and trademarks so other, better managed companies can hopefully do some interesting things with all the stuff Acclaim has made over the years.
>>Because the average CEO takes down $10 million a year.
Facts to back this up?
>>Anyone know what the CEO is making?
Before spouting your mouth off with "facts", why don't you spend 10 minutes looking up what he/she makes, it's all public record and can be found by clicking on the stock link in the story.
That post was not Insightful.
Interplay has all but died, but we don't see them selling off their worthwhile licenses. Instead, they're just leveraging the FallOut name to garner new investment.
I'm afraid the demise of poorly managed companies just leads to the firing of the real employees, but leaves the poorly managed franchises. Hence, the necrophilic anal-raping that FallOut is getting.
--LordPixie
Money goes a lot farther when you throw it at programmer salaries than it does when you throw it at the execs.
Though maybe I'm just saying that because I program.
In over 15 years, Acclaim (aka Acclame LOL) has put out practically nothing but drivel. I seriously can't think of one good game that they were responsible for, and a ton that were complete crap (Airwolf, Destination: Earthstar, and Total Recall to name a few, and that's just on the NES!). Moreover, Acclaim's main subsidiary during the NES days was LJN, which made execrable movie-license games like Back to the Future 2 & 3 and Bill and Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure. I honestly don't know how they survived longer than companies that made decent games (e.g. Sir-Tech, 3DO, Microprose). Good riddance.
Rob
25 milions ? Cmon. Arent they supposed to MAKE money ? 25 milions is like sitting on your ass all year with no sales.
Go grab those torrents.
Mabye they should put out a 10-in-1 TV Game like everybody else and pull some cash in that way. Now to find 10 old Acclaim games that I liked.....
I'm reminded of a comic
To be honest, I don't know that much about Acclaim's games. The only thing I remember about them are some rather dubious advertising campaigns, which I don't think they actually ever meant to follow through on. I think they were just proposed for the shock value, the whole "any publicity is good publicity" idea.
I decided that I didn't want to buy any of their games because I didn't want to encourage that behavior, but I don't recall the issue actually coming up. They didn't make any games I was interested in.
The other thing I noticed which would have sent up an immediate red flag to me is that they factor their receivables. Now, it wouldn't surprise me if that was industry standard practice (this is not my industry), but in my experience the terms on factoring are usually so bad, that if you have to depend on that for your cash flow for more than a short time, you're already in danger. Maybe I'm just too cautious, but that's usually enough to keep me away from a company right there.
Didn't look like their G&A was particularly bad, or that their managers were unreasonably compensated. They just didn't sell enough games.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
Here. I haven't tried it personally, but the development effort looks pretty active.
The name acclaim has never really been linked with creating good games. These guys have been snapping up movie and television licenses for years and have been producing shitty games based on these said licenses.Just take a look at the crap they putout with the Simpsons name. They never had the power to actually create anything worthwhile and just used the Movie names to bring in the sales. Now in the light that you actually can create a decent game out of a movie license (See Spiderman 2 and Chronicals Of Riddick) companies who actually want to make a game out of their movie will go to a group with Talent.
Cya Acclaim nobody is going to miss you.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
It might be mean to kick their corpse, but they are one of the worst companies in video game history.
He's close:
In 2003, the average CEO of a major company received $9.2 million in total compensation
From Here
On average they make 531 times the average Joe.
Nice huh?
In 1980 they made 42.
-- taking over the world, we are.
At least this year they didn't blame Nintendo for their financial problems.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=AKLM
James Scoroposki, 55 Co-Chairman, Sr. Exec. VP, Treasurer, Sec. $ 312.00K
Gregory Fischbach, 61 Co-Chairman $ 479.00K
Rodney Cousens, 52 CEO $ 1.30M
Gerard Agoglia, 52 CFO, Exec. VP $ 28.00K
The CEO of a company heading to bankruptcy makes 1.3M per year!!! Holy crap, I chose the wrong career.
It's finally happpening. My prayers have been answered! I hope they die a LONG PAINFUL death. For 15+ years they have been torturing me with their horrid games, and they finally get whats what.
Remember when they decided to stop making new games for the gamecube because they said that there weren't enough people buying their games on the gamecube? It looks like nobody was buying them on the PS2, X-Box, or Gameboy Advanced either. But of course, they were prolly hoping that their savior would have been N-Gage...
These are the kinds of salaries both EA and THQ executives get... only they are doing financially well. It makes no sense as Acclaim descends into bankruptcy that the CEO continues to chomp through $1,300,000 a year.
There oughta be a law about that...