f13.net

Here (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1086127458&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&)

I think I've heard rumors of Interplay having issues weeks ago.

Here we go (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/04/15/news_6093683.html).   Their landlord was apparently knocking rudely at their door asking for rent 4/9/04.

Ouch.  And the bosses are nowhere to be found.

So when is the auction where we can pick up their IP at firesale prices.

So where do the rights to all their game licenses go?  Are they sold off?  Who gets fallout?

EA.

I dearly hope that the rights for FreeSpace revert to Volition. I still want my FS3.

Who the hell floats these guys $15M?  If Playnet could do that, WW2 Online could have had a half-dozen sequels by now.

Bruce

Edit: Looks like it was Vivendi:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7028

Well, long long ago Interplay made a bunch of really good games, brand names to endure the ages. They are part of PC game history. A strong brand name. Playnet made WW2 Online and....

Does that answer your question Bruce?

Freespace 3 would rock.  I wanna see how the story ends, dammit.

Loved both games' intro movies too.

How would one find out what is being done with the IP?

Not really.  How many of the people at Interplay now are the same people as back then?

You don't want to pretend name recognition of individual people does count more than company names? Not yet, not in the mass market (some noteable expections nonwithstanding, I don't think Bryan Fargo is one of those exceptions).

Its "Interplay - By gamers, for gamers" with a collection of real classics vs. "Yay, we made a game that might be fun for some people" Playnet. There were times games were sold only because the name Interplay was on the box, or at least favourably considered. You really want to claim the same about Playnet?

The same kind of dumb motherfuckers who float the Phantom venture capital. But seeing as how these idiots fucked up their relationships with Bioware AND Black Isle, I don't have much sympathy.

The best coverage for this is at http://www.nma-fallout.com where you'll find hardcore Fallout fans who've played watchdog on Interplay for a long time.  There was a lot of buzz about Fallout 3 development last summer, but then Interplay seemingly decided to abandon everything that might make them money.

This has been long-coming, though.  Herve Caen, a French businessman, has been CEO at Interplay for a couple of years, as I understand it.  He also owns Interplay's parent company, Titus, which bought Interplay very cheaply.  Any rights would presumably go to Titus; however, that is run by the same bungling asshole who ran Interplay into a hole.  Titus is hemmorhaging money and will probably die as well.

Vivendi cut a deal with Interplay that netted some money for the flagging company but, it seems, the upshot is that Vivendi may have the most right to Interplay's IP as a result (if Titus folds).

The Interplay drama has been going on for a long time.  Promising games halted/sold cheaply, and then, more recently, not paying rent or filing SEC reports and taking insurance money out of employee paychecks even after their benefits were revoked by Interplay's insurance company.  It's a mess, but most people up on what was happening with the company expected its demise.

I still want Fallout 3.

Wow, WW2OL6... Can I preorder?

Yes.

Paypal $20.00 to cevikd@hotmail.com.

Well, Slashdot finally put it up, even though I submitted the news to them over 24 hours ago.

Meh (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/02/2231219&mode=thread&tid=127&tid=186&tid=98&tid=99).

The only image that comes to mind when the name Interplay is mentioned is Descent to Undermountain.

That's funny, the image I always get is from the days before they sunk to the suck, the original Star Trek adventure game that had the original Kirk cast.

Click on Spock - click on Vulcan Nerve Pinch... Worked every time!

Interplay, I remember the good old days

Freespace 1&2, Baldur's Gate 1&2 (the real games not the console action games), Icewind Dale 1&2, Fallout 1&2. Hell even their console titles were moderately entertaining.

However, most of those titles I mentioned were done by Black Isle or Bioware. I figured Interplay was being run by morons when they killed off Black Isle.

I too was once one of those who bought games because I trusted interplay. A sad day indeed.

See, I never trusted Interplay. I trust Bioware and Black Isle.

Publishing houses are systematically destroying the gaming industry, same as they did with the music industry, except not so many people seem to think EA or Vivendi are evil incarnate just yet.

Give it time. I guess people don't care until it's knocking on their own door, right? I mean, nobody gave a shit about the recording industry until they got litigious, and the recording industry has been screwing everyone for years.

It's just business, american style, aka how hard can you screw the consumer before they bite back. Answer? Really fucking hard.

I don't know if I would be as rough as sky.  It seems like the game publishing houses are being made to pay for their crimes of stupidity.  Giants can be seen tumbling almost on a yearly basis.  Even still living giants like EA have suffered for their crimes against online gaming.  Their online EA.com sucked tons of money out of them and then fell off like a leperous limb.  Some potentially good games suffered or died in the process (TGFKAUO2, the freelancer mmog, the battletech mmo, motor city online, earth and beyond, sims online...) but the whole clusterfuck bit EA pretty damn hard.

Interplay has been a fuckup for a long time and now they are paying the piper.  Sierra was huge and has shriveled to nothing. Justice is getting served at least to a portion of these publishers.  Other publishers are coming up and doing good things as well.  NCSoft went for the CoH gamble, they seem to be treating garriot right for a second try at a first impression, they are trying out a freaking car wars mmog even.  Some pretty non-standard stuff getting funding.

I don't see this like the RIAA until all the giant shit publishers band together and form an organization like the RIAA.  I don't see it happening at this time.

What I do see is a cyclical pattern.  New publisher shows up, the smart ones fund the right games and promote the right dev houses.  They thrive and become BIG.  Then the original passion leaks out of them.  The original staff moves on, the suits take over, and then the publisher begins the long decent into bankruptcy preceeded by many many stupid moves and dismantling of many good dev houses.  But so far there still seem to be new publishers coming out that don't suck that will be the future dying giants once their glory days have passed.

Heh. Why do you think I don't discuss music piracy any more? :)

Here's hoping Activision gets the Interplay IP's, so Troika can make me a Fallout 3.

If that fails, well Vivendi och Ubisoft would be alot better then EA.

Bards Tale and Wasteland.

You people make it sound like Interplay always was a worthless publisher. Once ago they WERE the Black Isle of that time.

True enough, they've made some good games, why else would people still be upset with them heh, it's not like people get riled up over Dreamcatcher.

I guess that clinches it (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/04/news_6100019.html) for Interplay.

Jesus, any company that negligent shouldn't be allowed to exist. Lame.

No, the company should be allowed to exist.  But the executives need to have their assets liquidated and be forced to work in some third world country factory to make up for it.

It is a shame to see bad business decisions / management screw over employees and a name.  As a project manager, you have the responsibility for everyone under you and if you aren't able to make the tough decisions or see the big picture, you sure as hell don't deserve to be there.

Geez, that just makes baby Jesus sad. I've worked in places where we've gone unpaid (or had pay delayed by a few days because there was no money in the bank) for months at a time, and it was ridiculous. To hold this kind of loyalty is only going to bite this guy in the ass. Company's like this have NO loyalty to good employees, only to getting what they can out of the dead husk before the door's get forcibly closed.

They owe back taxes, employee wages, fines and a shitton of rent, not to mention unpaid royalties.

What a bunch of clueless fucksticks.

Did I read that wrong or do they have 1.2 Mil in cash reserves and are still not paying their employees?

That's what it read like to me.

Looked like to me they HAD 1.2 mill left in mid April unless the books were tampered with and they really had nothing at that point in time or saving the 1.2 mill to run run away.

1,200,000 supposed cash on hand in mid April

- 79,000 fine for not paying employees
-179,000 back taxes to the state
-432,000 unpaid rent
-156,000 unpaid royalties to BioWare

= $432,921 left, for employee salaries for at least April and May (not considering any other bills and investors they owe).

Don't forget whatever it costs them to reinstate their worker's comp insurance which got them shut down by the state in the first place.

The employees said they had not been paid in for "over a month", so I presume they were paid 1-2 times after the mid-April financials.  They had 120 people on the payroll at that time and cut it down to 80.  If they gave the people they let go 2 weeks pay as well, and they're making about $60K a year, then that's $500,000 for those 2-4 weeks right there.  So they paid that, and some of their operating expenses, but not their rent, and that probably left them with less than $500,000.  So they probably could have paid employees in May, but if the cash flow was uneven or they were trying to work a deal, they might have needed that cash to keep operating long enough to receive new investment.

The unpaid rent is very unusual, especially since it seems like the landlord wasn't willing to cut them any more slack.  The unpaid back taxes is really not that big a deal, and the royalty disagreement isn't really that big a deal... that's not a very big amount, and could simply be a result of a contract dispute rather than an attempt to avoid a payout because of financial problems.  The lawyers fees alone will probably wind up more than the that.

Bruce

damn, I was really looking forward to Fallout 3, the Fallout series belongs somewhere on top 5 ever imo. Thing is I would pay 50 quid for a Fallout 2 expansion, and I would be happy if they just gave me some new areas to play around with and a little story. I finished the second installation just a few months back and it's still hot stuff, even by today standards.

More dirt on Interplay at Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/08/news_6100200.html)...

"Gamespot reported today that Interplay's CEO Herve Caen may have succeeded in acquiring workers' compensation insurance for the company, meaning that employees can now return to work at it's Irvine offices after the government forced it's closure on Friday.

Also mentioned were reports from The Orange County Register today which suggest that Titus Interactive, Interplay's majority shareholder has declared bankruptcy and "will enter into a period of observation during which it intends to continue negotiations on the possible sale of assets".

Exactly which assets are being sold was not disclosed. " -Quoted from GameDev.net

Interplay has been a mess for quite a while. I made the mistake of buying into Interplay back when Run Like Hell was released and getting rave reviews. I got in around .22 it ran up to almost .60. I of course forgot about the sell high part and I'm now sitting on shares that aren't worth shit. Luckily I didn't have much money at the time and only bought 2500 shares.

Interplay is now working with S&G capital in order to try and sell a few things off to get some money to stay afloat. I'm hoping that Titus is forced to sell Interplay completely to someone else so I'll at least get a little bit out of the shares I still have. They do still have some IP that may be worth something: Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Exiled License and Kingpin are the main things they'll be trying to sell.