Acclaim Entertainment Files for Bankruptcy 118
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."
Constructor (Score:3, Interesting)
A great game - I've never seen anything quite like it. Anyone know of anything similar to this?
good riddance... (Score:2, Interesting)
Among the whole field of lousy game publishers, they were very close to the bottom. Maybe outshined by crooks at Take Two? Not that Acclaim wasn't crooked...
Job opportunities (Score:2, Interesting)
Taken from Acclaim's own pages, right now (linkage [acclaim.com]):
Don't think I'll be sending in my resume after all
Game publishers (Score:4, Interesting)
A long time ago I read something to the effect that we'll see the death of the game industry (computer and console) if Moore's law slows down/stops/ceases to aplly to gaming. If new technology can't improve on last years games by a significant margin, then the industry's business model is in _real_ trouble (which might explain the abundance of sequels).
I know that, other than Doom 3 and Thief 3, it's been a long time since I bought a new release (no, I don't pirate). The last few original games I've liked had gameplay that was refined, but not really _new_ as such. Dungeon Siege, for example, was basically Diable meets Icewind Dale; it was good and well executed, but not really a new idea.
I'm not being a nostalgic geezer here, I really think we could be in trouble. Anyone care to comment?
Acclaim lost it years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Game publishers (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Creditor info... (Score:5, Interesting)
The order that creditors get paid in is spelled out in the bankruptcy laws, and the bankruptcy court essentially settles any ties. It's not completely set in stone (if all the creditors get together and agree to a particular division, it should be approved), but there is a broad outline. IIRC, the rough order (in my state, at least) is:
#1 Bankruptcy Court costs
#2 Payroll Taxes
#3 Employees back pay
#4 Secured creditors (ie, they got collateral for their loans)
#5 Unsecured creditors
And of course, if more than one lender has the same collateral, the order that the liens were issued in makes a difference. I could be wrong about Employees being so favorably treated, too. Heck, I could be wrong about all of that, but I think it's fairly close.
quality was the issue (Score:2, Interesting)
What is Slashdot's Deal With SPOnG?? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Bard's Tale: marked start of RPG on computers (Score:2, Interesting)
Sayonara Acclaim (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not All Bad (Score:2, Interesting)
P.s - Sorry to link to a competitors website