On July 15, three days after their Ghostbusters game released for PlayStation 4 and other platforms, developer Fireforge Games filed for bankruptcy.
Discovered by Kotaku, Fireforge filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last month and has been liquidating assets to try to pay off debts of $11.3 million to Tencent Holdings, which owns 37% of the studio.
According to the documents, Fireforge had two games that entered – and exited – development over the last five years. One, code-named Zeus, was to be published by Razer, while the other, code-named Atlas, was funded by Tencent. Fireforge owes Tencent that $11.3 million for Atlas.
Min Productions, which is owned by Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, filed a lawsuit against Fireforge, alleging they failed to deliver on their contract with Zeus, using the money for Atlas instead. However, Fireforge says they didn’t begin working on Atlas until after Razer pulled funding for Zeus. While Fireforge works through their bankruptcy, the lawsuit is on hold.
Fireforge was also sued in 2015 by lawyer Richard Land, who claimed that Fireforge backed out of a deal to license 38 Studios’ social media platform Helios for $3.7 million, and chose instead to make their own version with ex-38 Studios developers.
As for the Ghostbusters game, which we said isn’t worth your time, one person who worked on it told Kotaku that it was in development for only eight months.
[Source: United States Bankruptcy Court (1), (2), United States District Court via Kotaku, Game Informer]
