Slashdot Mirror
Acclaim Entertainment Files for Bankruptcy
Prof. Jonathan Ezor, Touro Law Center writes "According to this story in Long Island Business News, Acclaim Entertainment has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the Eastern District of New York bankruptcy court, meaning it will liquidate its assets and shut down. The story states in part, 'Computer game maker Acclaim Entertainment (Nasdaq: AKLM) has filed for voluntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would result in the liquidation of the company's assets. The company filed papers in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Central Islip that estimated its debts at more than $100 million and its assets at $10 million to $50 million. The filing said it had more than 200 creditors.' Game Over."
With recent titles such as American Pro Trucker and Mary Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16, it's almost hard to believe they were losing money.
Bankruptcy Wins...
FATALITY
Acclaim has always been on this cycle of boom and bust. They had NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat (neither of which were original titles - they were ports). Then things started to get a bit tight around the transition time between genesis/snes and saturn/ps1 (some baaad games came out for these - some, thankfully, never saw the light of day because they were sooo bad). Then came Turok. This got them going again. Did they rest on their laurels? Nah! They just started spending money like there was no tomorrow.
It all started to go really downhill with pretty much every product after N64. It's taken several years for them to die but they lost the momentum a *long* time ago. A string of very poor quality, dubiously marketed games got them in this position.
Is Acclaim management all to blame? Well, frankly, yes. Not just those in Glencove but all of the management. But the studio management teams had their hands tied by Glen Cove.
Have you noticed that the only part of the management team that has survived any appreciable period of time is Fishbach, Scorpowski and Cousins?
All the rest were fired or jumped ship.
They went through many CFO's, CTO's, COO's (and whatever made up job titles they came up with) within a very short period of time. The staffing turnover rate in glen cove was amazing.
I recall a meeting once where we were told, "if we don't pull out of this, we're going to hit a mountain". Today, they hit the mountain and slid down it in a big heap.
My thoughts go out to the employees who found out they were laid off when they couldn't get in to their offices. The management team never even had the decency to tell them they were no longer employed.
I prefer this one as an insight into why Acclaim ran into problems.
I'd agree with that in principle if Acclaim wasn't such a large publisher of games (they've got quite a list of titles)...
:-) Guess that's why I keep my eyes on the independent wargame publishers... :) They're turn-based and proud. :-)
Sure, there are independent developers making crap and dying off all the time, but that's been true of every industry. When the big companies start dying off and/or not being able to find a game that isn't terrible, something larger is amiss. I think we're seeing what is going to happen inevitably to the entire marketplace if the big companies don't stop making MOTS and focusing on graphics and framerates to the nth degree.
I haven't bought a new release in quite some time for any console or my PC/Macs. The games I have bought are used titles of games like Disgaea and La Pucelle Tactics (and Silent Storm 2 for the PC.) The whizzbang movie-tie-in or whatnot hasn't even been on my rent list since I tried to play Blade on the consoles. Bleh.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make (or not, it's been a long day)... is that we're seeing a hyper expansive version of the days before the crash of 84. (mainly it's expansive is because games and console entertainment in general are much more a part of society than in 1984.)
Tons of games are going into the bargain bin (shovelware galore) before you even get a chance to read up on the title, companies are dropping like flies, the "next big thing" is not giving people cause to do their traditional "want it now!" drool-fest. I am thinking if the PS3 and XBox Next aren't leaps and bounds over their current offerings, it's going to collapse under its own weight. The big companies are launching tons of "also-rans" of the last big hit, seeing if any of them will stick... and I just don't think even EA has the financial cushion to keep doing this forever. That's just a guess, of course.
(and I miss TBS games...hehehh)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
I submitted this story to Slashdot on Friday and on Tuesday, first just with the SPOnG.com story, then again on Tuesday with other sources.
The SPOnG story has feedback directly from Acclaim employees in the UK. Their forum on the story has a comment from an Acclaim employee that their pension contributions have not been payed since April!
Honestly, do the editors actually RTFA, or do they just see SPOnG and bin it? This is the 5th time I've submitted stories from SPOnG, just to have them appear on Slashdot days later, attributed to someone else, usually GamesIndustry.biz, who re-write SPOnG stories for their own front page.
What is up with this?
-- I like the cut of your thinking, young man. - me.