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Starbreeze in desperate need of a payday after Overkill's The Walking Dead flop.

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...rbreeze-after-overkills-the-walking-dead-flop

Following the commercial failure of Overkill's The Walking Dead, the Payday publisher has filed for "reconstruction" with the Stockholm District Court - an alternative to bankruptcy that gives it breathing room to find the money it needs to pay off debts.

"The decision is based on a shortage of liquidity and deemed to be a necessary step to give the Company the time needed to negotiate a long-term financial solution and implement changes in the organisation and operations," Starbreeze said in a press release. "The financial targets for Q4 2018 and 2020 no longer applies."

Starbreeze had already served notice to cut costs across its business as a result of the poor performance of Overkill's The Walking Dead, but it sounds like the game was an even worse commercial failure than we thought, and a recent price cut had little impact.

"With the latest statistics from Overkill's The Walking Dead (including effects from latest marketing efforts) affecting the forecasted sales, it has reduced the short term forecasted revenue resulting in an expected shortfall of cash in January 2019," Starbreeze said.

Starbreeze said staff will continue to be paid as normal and the company will continue to operate, but during this "reconstruction period", no payments can be made to suppliers for services or goods made up to this point.

Meanwhile, CEO Bo Andersson has left the company. Deputy CEO Mikael Nermark is acting CEO.

"In this phase, Starbreeze needs a different kind of leadership and we have therefore decided to ask Mikael Nermark to take on the full responsibility with our full mandate for this new phase," said Starbreeze chairman Michael Hjorth.
 

Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
Curse´s The Walking Dead.

First Telltale Games and now this?

Well the game seems of low buget... even the loading screen are so slow and the gameplay is such boring.
 

EDMIX

Member
I worried about this game as soon as I kept seeing those CGI trailers, folks....its 2018. Its such a dated way to market a game and I'd argue sets fans up to have a massive difference of quality. I like Kojima's and Rockstar's approach as I always loved that about their games, show in game and simply work hard to have what you see, what you get as to warmly welcome the user to the world.

vs

Here is a bunch of trailers of quality the final product can't feasible meet. No reason to be doing this in 2018, its not only a waste of money, I don't even think such a way to market a game will get positive attention as much as it will have a disconnect with the user.
 
I can't remember any starbreeze game I liked besides Chronicles of Riddick : Escape from butcher Bay way back on the original xbox.

Hope they turn things around.
 

Melubas

Member
Really sad, I love this studio. The Darkness, Riddick, Enclave (with the Swedish-speaking goblin!), Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and Payday 2 were all really cool games.
 
Really sad, I love this studio. The Darkness, Riddick, Enclave (with the Swedish-speaking goblin!), Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and Payday 2 were all really cool games.

I didn’t know they made Brothers: A tale of two sons. Loved the story.
 
They made the game in collaboration with Josef Fares, a Swedish Movie director. So I Think he wrote the story but they did Everything else.

I heard about him, the documentary was insightful. I think he has his own video game studio now. As he was also involved in the A Way Out game.

Thanks.
 
50 people studio. Why is this a publisher again ? Also a public company? Why? Whoever was in charge of this company is an idiot
 
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Used to follow them on Twitter.

Then they started sending out financial tweets, in the style of a large company.

Boring...


there is a reason you dont see publishers that small. lol. they spent too much money on projects they do not have the production pipleline to look at or quality check. 50 people isn't enough just to have the staff to take care of publishing paperwork etc. whoever was running them was just a greedy person that had no idea what he was doing.

they are too small for a developer, let a lone a publisher. but they are doing both? wtf? no shit this happened
 

Helios

Member
https://www.altchar.com/games-news/583184/starbreeze-studios-offices-raided-one-person-arrested
They've been raided for insider trading.
Now it appears that the former CFO, Sebastian Ahlskog and CEO, Bo Andersson Klint sold all of their shares in Starbreeze in November 2018. After that, Starbreeze initiated cost savings, changed CEO and went into reconstruction status due to a liquidity crisis. This could be the subject of suspicion for ECA, which they based their raid on.
 

Fbh

Member
They might also need a new marketing team.
As a gaming enthusiast I visit sites like gaf, listen to gaming podcasts, follow most big gaming events and I'm subscribed to a few gaming focused youtube channels and I have no idea what this game is about, I think I've never seen a gameplay video for it and I didn't even know it was out until like a week after release.
 
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