Interplay On Verge Of Bankruptcy?

EvilDonut writes "According to Gamesindustry.biz, long-time publisher Interplay is facing possible bankruptcy. Apparently, the company is three months behind in rent, owes almost $280,000 in a mix of outstanding payroll taxes and non-payment penalties for those taxes, and failed to meet its payroll obligations in the middle of this month. Heavy stuff." The piece also notes that, following "the asset-stripping antics of parent company Titus", the company has "lost the rights to publish Baldur's Gate 3 and other future D&D properties, and it may lose the right to continue publishing its Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance titles if it cannot settle a lawsuit from Atari which accuses it of failing to pay royalties on the D&D license." We've previously covered Black Isle's de facto demise, another key part of Interplay's woes.

Seen it coming for a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for Interplay back in it's hey-day (late 97-late 98). They had so much going for them. Lucrative deal with Shiny, the D&D license, Fallout, BG, Carmageddon. There were 400+ employees across three buildings.

Then there was the whole going public thing, and some really bad development choices. They split up all the devlopment teams into "studios" Which is where Black Isle came from. They scrapped some pretty big projects that already had 2 years dev time into them (Stonekeep 2 jumps to mind), and started releasing extremely dated material (Descent to Undermountain). I was lucky enough to leave before the first big round of layoffs.

Last I heard, the company was down to about 40 employees or so, and from this it sounds like they won't be around much longer. Hopefully someone will get in there and buy the remaining licenses they have with any sort of value.

Re:Back in my day....

[The Evil Couch]

that all went away after their IPO. going corporate almost always ruins game studios. I just wish people would pick up on this fact and stop doing IPOs when they're making tons of cash and awesome games.

On a related tangent, I curse Google's founders for not thinking that $100+ million net profit was enough and filing for their IPO.

Re:More and more PC-game companies fold ...

[MMaestro]

True, but 'nothing ventured, nothing gained.' Interplay was breaking into new ground with their work on consoles (maybe going multiplatform in the beginning wasn't the best idea) so its hard to judge how good or bad they would've done. Who knows, they mighta become the SquareEnix of action games.

As for their PC games, money doesn't grow on names. And making a sequel which fans of the previous won't tear apart is expensive.

Re:Now we watch and see...

[AndrewHowe]

Mod parent up. We managed to get clear of Titus/Interplay a while back. But there's a special place in hell reserved for the Caen brothers. I love French people in general, but I make an exception for those fuckers.