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."

What we need worms!

[kabocox]

Worms is a great game. I hope it doesn't die.

Re:What we need worms!

[Sogol]

Don't worry - BSD has been dying for years ;)

Re:What we need worms!

[gl4ss]

it is a good game, but it will be a good game regardless of the future crap they'll be putting out under the name.

what matters even more is that it's a so simple genre that anybody can clone it, add their own twist and ship it off - AND GET A FRESH START! so they won't have to keep adding stuff or turn it into 3d and appear to be selling a new game(whilst everyone is pondering if they should 'upgrade' or not), they can genuinely sell a new game and add genuinely new stuff without 'risking' anything(team17

Free (Libre) clone of Worms from Team17

[mr_tenor]

Here [happypenguin.org]. I haven't tried it personally, but the development effort looks pretty active.

Re:What we need worms!

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't, Acclaim is only the publisher, and only in the US, and only for the non-mac versions (Mac is published by Feral Interactive) Sega publishes it in Europe.

The developer, (Team17) is alive and kicking. If Acclaim goes under, they can just easily find someone else to publish the Worms games.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Chump Change

[Romeozulu]

>>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.

Re:Chump Change

[Anonymous Coward]

Relax. Relatively speaking, he wasn't off by that much [aflcio.org] ($9.2 million instead of $10 million). Acclaim doesn't drop that kind of cash -- only a couple mil among its officers -- but the points being made are probably on the mark.

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.

Re:Chump Change

[Colazar]

So I went and looked at theire financials, and it looks like they actually died back in 2000, with a horrendously bad year. They stayed afloat by borrowing a large amount of money (~$50 million), and the interest payments on that doubtless kept them below water ever since. Their operating cash flow has been negative ever since, with the only cash they've generated having been from the sale of stock. So really, it's just taken 3 years for their corpse to stop twitching.

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.

Re:Chump Change

[aliens]

He's close:

In 2003, the average CEO of a major company received $9.2 million in total compensation

From Here [aflcio.org]

On average they make 531 times the average Joe.

Nice huh?

In 1980 they made 42.

Re:Chump Change

[kilrogg]

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.

no great loss

[Giant Ape Skeleton]

Acclaim has cranked out an astonishingly large number of mediocre-to-awful games in the last several years.

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....

Re:no great loss

[Mike Hawk]

Riiiight. Because less choice, less competition, and everything going to EA is good for the consumer.

Re:no great loss

[Pluvius]

The competition has to actually exist to be beneficial. Acclaim wasn't competition, and was in fact likely dragging down the video game industry by association.

Rob

Re:no great loss

[Mike Hawk]

Likely dragging down the video game industry? Proof?

Re:no great loss

[Fred Or Alive]

They did BMX: XXX. :-)

Re:no great loss

[Pluvius]

They also made scads of bad games that sold like hotcakes due to a combination of big movie licensing and consumers who didn't know any better. Oh, and also that whole thing about advertising on gravestones and asking people to name their children "Turok" for cash. That Toastyfrog article someone linked in another thread explains it pretty well.

Rob

Maybe this isn't necessarily a bad thing

[foidulus]

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.

Ehhh....just look at Interplay.

[LordPixie]

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 [www.nmr.nl] that FallOut is getting.


--LordPixie

Re:Ehhh....just look at Interplay.

[Pluvius]

Interplay has all but died, but we don't see them selling off their worthwhile licenses.

That's because, for whatever reason, Herve Caen thinks that he can keep the company afloat. Once even he realizes that Interplay is finished, he'd have to be incredibly stupid not to sell the licenses off.

Rob

GOOD.

[Pluvius]

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 ?

[rasz]

25 milions ? Cmon. Arent they supposed to MAKE money ? 25 milions is like sitting on your ass all year with no sales.

Nostilgia

[wileycat]

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.....

A nice dream

[JoelMeow]

I'm reminded of a comic [penny-arcade.com]

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 [computeran...ogames.com] campaigns [eurogamer.net], 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.

Re:A nice dream

[JoelMeow]

It looks like my first link about advertising on gravestones requires registration. Here's another link that I don't thing does:

here [guardian.co.uk]

or you could just google for Acclaim and gravestones

Re:A nice dream

[WarlockD]

Thats scarry, that comic is almost an exactly a year old. If this post was just 6 days older.. hehe

Re:A nice dream

[antime]

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.

They didn't and they were all fake. The people in their ads were revealed to be paid actors, the guy who was supposed to camp outside a gaming store for Turok Whatever buggered off after a day or so, they pulled the offer to pay traffic fines on the release of Burnout etc. I'm very surprised that so many people bought the ads, but they were hugely successful i

Good Riddance

[darkmayo]

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.

Re:Good Riddance

[k4rm4_p0l7c3]

you're so right. i've been gaming for 10 years now, and i've seen that company produce nothing but cross-marketing circlejerks with Hollywood, major sports and television.

good f'in riddance.

Re:Good Riddance

[Cais]

Ironically, Acclaim's name is all over Spiderman 2 ;-).

Advertise Now!

[Anonymous Coward]

When Acclaim finally dies, we should pool our money and advertise on their Tombstone [techstuff.ca].

It might be mean to kick their corpse, but they are one of the worst [toastyfrog.com] companies in video game history.

different year, same result.

[BurgEnder]

At least this year they didn't blame Nintendo for their financial problems.

HA!

[MaverickUW]

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...