Perth Game Company CEO Takes IP By Night

snicho99 writes "A US owned gaming company has fled Australia, leaving unpaid employees and a massive tax bill. Apparently many staff have been working unpaid for months to allow their game to ship and hopefully the company to recover. Interzone's Perth (Western Australia) office was created with the assistance of a state government grant. Last week Interzone's (American) CEO entered the building at night and removed all the servers and IP so that Interzone could continue production at a new company they have opened in Ireland. The staff caught him on camera. More background here."

Comments

There is much more to this than the Summary states

[Anonymous Coward]

Interzone owns the Australia Tax Office (ATO) approximately $1m AUD and $500k in unpaid wages and superannuation. The owner changed the locks on the firm at 4am in the morning, locking all employees out from their work. Not even given a chance to collect their personal belongings. A new 'Interzone' called Big Collision is being setup in Dublin Ireland to complete development of their game Futebol in time for the World Cup, and without the debt they have accumulated in Australia. Originally Interzone was given a grant by the Western Australian goverment of $500k, so this has blown up very big on the news there, causing quite some political issues and questions of the chief Treasurer. They did not even lay off the staff, as that would of caused paper work, and the paying out of their due wages and redundancy money. They were simple locked out from their building.
The firm that provides the middleware (BigWorld) based in Sydney, provided a server engineer (contracted by Mike to clear out the IP assets from the server.)

The Interzone employees have been fantastic, in collecting evidence, and staying together to fight for what they are due.

This is not the first time this has occured in Australia, similar shit has happened in the last year with firms Transmission, and Fuzzyeyes. Video games, one of the last places for cow-boy businessmen.

For people who would like to read more on this, check these links:
http://www.tsumea.com/australasia/australia/news/120210/interzone-games-perth-closes-staff-locked-out
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/02/wa-dev-interzone-games-close-to-liquidation/
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/02/interzone-ceo-marty-brickey-responds/
And this video where the employees confront one of the directors http://vimeo.com/9574704

Re:Not nice.

[Barny]

Actually....

First is the employees super funds, then taxes, then wages, then everyone else they owe money to.

The employees are covered for loss of wages by the GEERS scheme, which they can submit and get their: Lost wages; Lost holiday pay; Redundancy payout (according to industry standards or their contract, and if contract its subject to evaluation).

According to Australian law anyway :)

Re:Bunch of Asian Employees ?

[TapeCutter]

"We may have a ridiculous amount of asian immigrants that still speak chinese/japanese after they get here, but that still does not make us a part of asia."

We actually have very few Japanese immigrants but they do love spending their holidays and money here, particularly in Queensland where the local economy is heavily dependent on tourisim.

The Japanese are golf mad and a golf trip to Oz to play on a real golf course is cheaper than a golf club membership in Tokyo to play on a multi story driving range. On the whole they are very well mannered guests in our country and tend to stick to organised tour groups because of the language barrier.

Also every chineese immigrant I have ever met speaks english, it's a requirement to get into the country unless you come in as a refugee and we do not recognise people from China as refugees.

As you probably know there is a minority racist element in our population who idolise people such as Pauline Hanson. Hanson is ironically now emmigrating to the UK after basically being ridiculed and laughed out of politics by the rest of us. I think she is in for a shock when she finds out how many second and third generation "brown people" are wandering around the UK.

For the non-Aussie readers, members of Hansen's minority are generally refered to as "yobbos", which when translated into American means "rednecks".

Re:Call wikipedia

[radish]

I always think it's hysterical when American engineers get so up in arms about "mere" programmers daring to call themselves engineers. In the UK, the status of Chartered Engineer is given to trained, professional engineers in many disciplines. Each discipline has it's own professional body who are permitted to issue the certification, and guess what? The BCS (British Computer Society) are one of those bodies, and can award CEng status to suitably qualified people. There's no mention of having to understand Newtonian Mechanics as a prerequisite...