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Fireforge Games Files For Bankruptcy Days After Launching Ghostbusters Game
With a new movie on the horizon, Ghostbusters fans had hopes that the most recent Activision-published game would deliver. The reality was a critically-panned endeavor that was released in the death throes of a company that was in massive debt and under legal assault for fraud and breach of contract.
Kotaku broke the news yesterday that Fireforge games, developer of the Ghostbusters game released last month, filed for bankruptcy just three days after the title's launch. The court documents (embedded and linked below) show debts of nearly 12 million to China-based Tencent Holdings, which owns more than a third of the studio.
Fireforge allegedly rushed the Ghostbusters game out the door in only eight months. However, it wasn’t enough to salvage the financial affairs of the company.
The studio was formed in 2011 by Tim Campbell, who had previously worked at Westwood and Blizzard. The studio was tasked with developing games not only for part-owner Tencent, but also for Min Productions. The latter has financial ties to Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan.
Min Productions has sued Fireforge for fraud and breach of contract. The developer was paid $4.6 million and failed to deliver the game as promised. The case, which was filed in 2014 is still ongoing as Min Productions has neither received its funds returned or the as-is version of the software.
Fireforge counter-sued, stating that it worked up until such time as funding from Min Productions stopped. We’ve reached out to Razer for comment. Fireforge Games appears to have shuttered its website.
[Source: United States Bankruptcy Court (1), (2), United States District Court via Kotaku]
Our Take
Ghostbusters seems to be the last in a long line of missteps for Fireforge. Through this lens, it shouldn’t surprise us that the game wasn’t very good. I have to wonder why Activision would choose to work with Fireforge given the company’s legal entanglements and failure to produce.
Fireforge Games Creditors by Michael Futter on Scribd
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