Welp , was anyone expecting anything different?
It’s a rare zombie game that I have no interest in playing.
-Tom
Don’t worry Tom, there is always request wednesday!
To be honest, I can’t imagine that I won’t try it at some point anyway. So by “no interest in playing”, I should have written “less interest in playing than you’d expect given that it’s a zombie killing game”.
-Tom
Ha ha! You’re going to play Overkill’s The Walking Dead.
Shocking!
The Walking Dead barely made a splash. I wonder how far along in development Psychonauts 2 and System Shock 3 are? If the latter’s too early, would another publisher even bother picking it up if Starbreeze don’t have the resources to continue supporting development?
Lets create a new edition and sell it at half price with dlc as an option!
Starbreeze’s CEO leaves, and the company’s going into reconstruction.
“STOCKHOLM (3 December 2018) – Starbreeze AB (publ) (“Starbreeze” or the “Company”) announces that the board of Starbreeze AB (publ) and the boards of the Company’s Swedish subsidiaries Starbreeze Publishing, Starbreeze Production, Starbreeze Studios, Enterspace and Enterspace International, have today filed for reconstruction with the Stockholm District Court. 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 organization and operations. The financial targets for Q4 2018 and 2020 no longer applies.”
As a consequence, stock’s placed on observation list:
https://twitter.com/NasdaqNordicDer/status/1069499690230665216
I also missed this story from last week:
"Only months after introducing a $3,200 virtual reality headset with an ultra-wide field of view, location-based HMD maker StarVR is facing the threat of imminent closure or sale, Digitimes reports. Majority-owned by Acer with a one-third stake from Starbreeze, StarVR was delisted from Taiwan’s stock exchange after only six months of trading, and is now expected to be disbanded within three months unless it gets profitable or purchased."
Welp…
That can’t be good.
Yikes. I imagine the insider trading charge stems from someone dumping a lot of stock just prior to the release of the poor sales figures for Walking Dead and the delisting of company stock on the exchanges.
Also, $3200 for a VR headset should be a crime as well. Sheesh.
From Resetera: Swedish business site Veckans Affärer posted an article yesterday about how Nordea (the biggest bank in Sweden) did an analysis on how the future of Starbreeze’s stock is looking. The stock was at the time of the article valued at 60 öre (which is about ~$0,067) and he potential future value ranges from 3 kronor (~$0,33) on the high end with a successful reconstruction to 0 kronor (which is about… checks notes… $0) and mentions of assets being sold in a “fire sale”.
No wonder it turned out so bad…
“If you go to any studio now, there is always a good hope at least 50 per cent of the people know the engine they’re working on, so they can coach the rest. But in this case, it felt like just 10 per cent of the people understood the engine. 90 per cent of people were just relying on that 10 per cent, or checking online. So we were using tutorials to try and make a game. That was bad.”
While Overkill hasn’t officially confirmed this yet, Sony’ started getting the word out to players that the console port’s been canned. Yesterday Starbreeze announced they made $3.7 million in revenue from Overkill’s The Walking Dead sales, after spending $150.5 million of the game’s development and various other cancelled projects.
Sony has started e-mailing all players who pre-ordered the game on PlayStation 4 and has begun issuing refunds, because the publisher has told them that the game has been cancelled.
It’s over.
“Our creators and their stories are the core of Skybound, and since 2014 we have worked hard to expand the world of ‘The Walking Dead’ into an exceptional co-op action FPS,” according to the statement. “We did our best to work with Starbreeze and resolve many issues that we saw with the game, but ultimately ‘Overkill’s The Walking Dead’ did not meet our standards nor is it the quality that we were promised.
“We are exceedingly sorry to our fans and share their disappointment in the game. We remain dedicated to providing our fans with the most premium quality content we can offer, and will continue to look for alternative video game options for the IP.”
That’s hardcore.
They took their ball, went home, and facepunched the other kids on their way off the baseball diamond.
-Tom