Ghostbusters developer Fireforge Games file for bankruptcy
Fireforge Games, who developed the recent Ghostbusters game that released alongside the movie on July 12, files for bankruptcy just three days later on July 15. Unfortunately, it seems the company has been trying to pay off a debt of ~$12 million by liquidating assets all through the month of July.
Their final game was the recent movie tie-in Ghostbusters game, on which the consensus seems to be that it is bad. Which could be explained with the fact that it was developed in under a year. Eight months, according to one employee.
Fireforge seems to have been plagued with one lawsuit after another. After the company was founded by ex-Blizzard employee, Tim Campbell in 2011, Fireforge has had two MOBA-like projects stopped. One game was code-named Zeus and was set to be published by popular hardware company Razer, while the other, code-named Atlas (Greek theme going on), was set to be published by Chinese publisher Tencent, who also owns 37% of Fireforge.
The company has been caught up in a lawsuit with a private company called Min Productions, who are owned by Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan. Bankruptcy filings show that Fireforge also owe $11.3 million to Tencent. Tan alleges that Fireforge failed on Zeus in order to work on Atlas, while Fireforge says they only began work on Atlas when Razer stopped paying for Zeus. Currently, that suit is on hold until the bankruptcy has been sorted out, which may take a while.
In the meantime, lawyer Richard Land also sued Fireforge in 2015. Land was the "receiver" responsible for selling the games and I from 38 Studios following the shutting down of that studio. 38 Studios was to be the driving force behind the Kingdom of Amalur MMO, before the project was cancelled. Land says that Fireforge signed a deal to license 38 Studios' social media platform, Helios, for 3.7 million, before going back on the deal and hiring ex-studio members to build a new version of Helios in-house.
For now, it seems Fireforge will have their hands full with bankruptcy, then a gauntlet of lawsuits to deal with. I certainly hope things don't get too out of hand.
