Vapourware System Shock 3 by OtherSide Entertainment - taken over by Tencent!

[Wunderbar]

Microsoft to the rescue!

With Tim Schafer bought, they will have their own personal crowdfunding platform!

But Microsoft hasn't bought Double Fine Productions !?

but what Double Fine would do if Starbreeze go bankrupt?

 

[SpaceWizardz]

Reconstruction, not bankruptcy.

THQ Nordic might grab some of their IPs but I don't see anything changing.

 

[Dexter]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-12-05-arrest-made-in-starbreeze-office-raid

Person detained following Starbreeze office raid
Swedish authorities suspect "gross insider breach".

Wesley Yin-Poole Deputy Editor

It just got a lot worse for the embattled video game company Starbreeze, which has suffered a raid on its offices by Swedish authorities.

The company behind the Payday franchise was raided Wednesday morning due to suspicion of "gross insider breach", Swedish financial website Dagens Industri reports.

Officials from the Swedish Economic Crime Authority were seen carrying away computers from Starbreeze's central Stockholm headquarters. A person was "detained", but authorities have yet to name them.

Starbreeze has had an awful time of it lately. As we reported earlier this week, the company is desperately trying to save itself from going out of business after a string of high-profile flops.

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

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.

Tellingly, CEO Bo Andersson recently left the company, with deputy CEO Mikael Nermark acting CEO.

It all sounds pretty grim for Starbreeze, and recent events cast doubt over the future of the Payday franchise, including ongoing work on Payday 2 and development of Payday 3.

 

[LESS T_T]

Press release: https://www.starbreeze.com/2018/12/...ess-internal-game-development-and-publishing/

STARBREEZE FOCUSES ON ITS CORE BUSINESS – INTERNAL GAME DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLISHING

STOCKHOLM (December 12, 2018)– Starbreeze AB has decided to focus on group’s core business: internal game development and publishing. The decision entails that operational and financial resources will be focused to these areas.

The group’s financial and operational resources will be focused to the core business and the platform for the group’s future operations. For the part that does not belong to the core business, the company will immediately initiate a process to find collaborations with external parties to secure that these operations develop in a positive way.

More detailed information on the operational changes in Starbreeze will be provided before year-end. Starbreeze assesses that the operational changes will be concluded at the half-year 2019.

”We’re now focusing the business towards a portfolio consisting of a mix of internally developed games and publishing titles. We are humble for the task at hand, but our aim to build a qualitative company in the entertainment industry still stands, and the existing portfolio provides a good platform for our first-class teams”, said Mikael Nermark, Acting CEO.

“Our shift to core enables a larger focus on our internal talents and teams, whilst improving internal organizational and development processes. Innovation and quality, and further on to deliver the best experiences for our players, will be our main goal in this process”, said Stephane Decroix, Chief Development Officer.

The company will initiate work to find financial partners to finance the whole or parts of the company’s future operations.

I guess they intend to keep SS3? Also probably scrapping that VR headset business.

 

[Infinitron]

I guess they intend to keep SS3?

That's what "publishing titles" sounds like, at least.

 

[Abu Antar]

I guess they intend to keep SS3? Also probably scrapping that VR headset business.

Their VR headset business seems to have been a disaster for a long time. Bad news after bad news. I suppose that it isn't far-fetched that they are giving up on it and focusing on purely developing and publishing video games.

 

[LESS T_T]

Maybe they're going to reveal this game next year? At the home ground of Starbreeze: https://nordicgame.com/warren-spector-announced-first-ng19-speaker/

First NG19 speaker Warren Spector

It’s a great pleasure for the organisers of Nordic Game 2019, 22-24 May in Malmö, Sweden to announce Warren Spector as the first confirmed speaker for next year’s conference.

The legendary developer of games such as Deus Ex and Epic Mickey has yet to reveal the topic of his talk, but the audience shouldn’t be surprised if it partly focuses on systems. And the number 3. Here’s to hoping!

So get your NG19 conference passes today – tickets are 50 percent off until 3 January!

About the Nordic Game conference
Nordic Game is the leading games conference in Europe, and 2019 will be its sixteenth year. Gathering over 2,000 games industry professionals in Malmö annually, Nordic Game is the one and only “home turf” meeting place for the highly successful game developers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

Learn more about NG19, 22-24 May in Malmö, Sweden at conf.nordicgame.com.

Nordic Game is not particularly known for game announcements though. Maybe GDC in March?

 

[LESS T_T]

Yes, they are going to keep SS3 (and Psychonauts 2 and 10 Crowns): https://www.starbreeze.com/2018/12/...rict-court-and-new-date-for-full-year-report/

Reconstruction Plan

As announced December 12, 2018 Starbreeze AB has decided to focus on the Group’s core business: internal game development and publishing. As a consequence of this decision operational and financial resources will be focused to the core business.

The platform for the Group’s future operations focuses on a portfolio consisting of a mix of internally developed games and publishing titles. These include:

• Internal development: PAYDAY 2, PAYDAY 3, PAYDAY: Crime War, OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead, Crossfire, Geminose
• Publishing: Psychonauts 2, System Shock 3, 10 Crowns

The Company has further identified non-core assets and the company has initiated a process to find collaborations with external parties to secure that these operations develop in a positive way. These assets include, but are not limited to:

• Enterspace, other VR LBE initiatives, StarVR, Nozon, PresenZ, Dhruvaand ePawn

The company will initiate efforts to find financial partners to finance the whole or parts of the Company’s operations. Starbreeze assesses that the operational changes will be concluded at the half-year 2019. Please note that the above definitions are preliminary and dependent on on-going negotiations.

Also relevant info from documents about the reconstruction:

https://www.starbreeze.com/sbz-media/2018/12/Starbreeze-Preliminary-Reconstruction-Plan-Dec-21.pdf

Loan from Nordea Bank AB (publ) to Starbreeze Publishing AB of 150 MSEK

The loan was taken out in August 2017 by the subsidiary Starbreeze Publishing AB and the total principal amount remains outstanding. However, the bank has received a complementary security through an additional agreement from February 2018 in the form of a deposit of the amount of 75 MSEK, which is pledged as security for the loan. The loan will fall due in August 2020. The loan carries interest at a rate equal to 3M STIBOR from time to time plus 3,5 percentage points.

The security for the loan consists of a share pledge over the shares of the subsidiaries Starbreeze Publishing AB and Starbreeze Production AB, as well as guarantees from the Parent Company and Starbreeze Production AB.

I assume August 2020 here is pretty important date for production of SS3.

Also, looks who's missing:

https://www.starbreeze.com/sbz-media/2018/12/Appendix-2-Balance-reports.pdf

Starbreeze Publishing AB Balans (Standard 2)

Intangible assets
: Concessions, patents, licenses, trademarks and similar rights

[...]

                                          Nov/2018     Nov/2017
10809 - Psychonauts Advanced Royalty      62,097,265   28,447,872
10810 - System Shock 3 Advanced Royalty   68,145,195   25,763,404

Well, I guess someone well-versed in these kinds of things might find more interesting there!

 

[toro]

They put $10 million each for Psychonauts 2 and SS3!? Big balls of steel.

 

[LESS T_T]

They put $10 million each for Psychonauts 2 and SS3!? Big balls of steel.

They already announced that they will invest $12M on SS3, no? For Psychonauts 2, on the other hand, originally announced amount was $8M, so it looks like they put more money with the delay. I have to wonder if Starbreeze will do the same for SS3, in the midst of this reconstruction.

 

[Zep Zepo]

System Shock 1: Designer and programmer Doug Church
System Shock 2: Designer Ken Levine

What does this faggot Waldo Rectum think he had anything to do with System Shock(s).

Oh, he was enforcer for EA, the publisher for #1.

I'm calling it now. Game will be shit.

Zep--

 

[LESS T_T]

What does this faggot Waldo Rectum think he had anything to do with System Shock(s).

Oh, he was enforcer for EA, the publisher for #1.

From Doug Church himself: https://flylib.com/books/en/4.479.1.135/1/

So we started talking then about doing an immersive simulation game but taking it out of the fantasy space. We talked a little bit about going modern versus going sci-fi, but the only problem with going modern is it will just beg so many questions: why can t I pick up the phone, why can t I get on the train, and so on. So we did a bunch of talking, and we probably did three or four high-level designs for sci-fi games.

Do you mean you and Warren?

Mostly Warren and I, but Paul Neurath back in Boston along with Austin Grossman who was one of the writer/designer guys on Underworld II . So we all bounced some ideas around, and I think Paul came down for a couple of days, and then Paul and I came back up to Boston, and Paul, Austin, and I bounced some ideas around and came up with a couple of little meta-settings. The abandoned spaceship or the abandoned moon base kind of things. And frankly the most important thing that came out of all of that was

Austin, Warren, Paul, and I wrote up a bunch of minutes of gameplay. Just sort of Here s what a minute of playing this game is going to feel like. You know, You hear the sound of a security camera swiveling, and then the beep of it acquiring you as a target, so you duck behind the crate and then you hear the door open so you throw a grenade and run out of the way... We had a couple of little docs like that which Austin and I took and revised. And in a lot of ways those became the game design. Obviously we put real story around it and all that kind of thing. So that was pretty important for Shock .

 

[Zep Zepo]

Now find the one where Doug Church and LGS say what a gigantic pain in the ass Waldo Rectum was. Came to their studio for a month from EA and basically harassed them every day to "GET IT DONE".

The truth is out there...

Zep--

 

[LESS T_T]

It would be great if you can find that. I'm very much interested in reading about that kind of accounts.

(Anyway, I don't think enforcing publisher's demands and doing creative work is mutually exclusive thing, especially when producers had more creative role than today.

Also for the record, I don't have any particular expectation for SS3. Yeah, maybe relatively positive [or rather, more interested to know what this will be] than others here, but I'm also ready for sinking or stinking.)

 

[Viata]

We talked a little bit about going modern

Would be gold. Fuck, I want this now.

 

[Zep Zepo]

It would be great if you can find that. I'm very much interested in reading about that kind of accounts.

I think it was a usenet thing, rec.games.something or something (or maybe a lame magazine of the time). I looked half assed for it and couldn't find it. Though I do remember reading it.

Zep--

 

[Nano]

We talked a little bit about going modern

Would be gold. Fuck, I want this now.

It nearly happened. You ever hear about Deep Cover? https://www.unseen64.net/2016/04/26/deep-cover-pc-cancelled/

It's set in the 60s, but it's the closest LGS got to modern day.

 

[Viata]

 

[Zep Zepo]

As far as SS3...

https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=7061.msg36519#msg36519

Re: Is this this still going to go ahead?
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2018, 02:03:11 PM »

Just to chime in here, SS3 will not be going through Kickstarter!

Haven't heard anything from Starbreeze on the Shock3 front, so I think (as of right now), we're unaffected.

Typically, that's basic PR speak for, we'll lose the funding.

I laf evry teim.

Zep--

 

[Child of Malkav]

Yeah, saw that rumor on steam also:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1742229167225601399/

 

[Zep Zepo]

I don't think the steamtards/OEtards understand Nightdive SS is not OEs SS3.

Wondered why they kept saying Nightdive (ss remake) in OEs forum as related to SS3 (possibly) losing funding from Starbreeze.

Zep--

 

[LESS T_T]

Typically, that's basic PR speak for, we'll lose the funding.

Yeah, saw that rumor on steam also:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1742229167225601399/

Well didn't you read that, from SS3 thread, their publisher announced that they will focus on the core business including the publishing of SS3, than a comment by the developer's CM from November or conspiracy theories from Steam community.

I don't think the steamtards/OEtards understand Nightdive SS is not OEs SS3.

Wondered why they kept saying Nightdive (ss remake) in OEs forum as related to SS3 (possibly) losing funding from Starbreeze.

Zep--

Because Nightdive is the owner of System Shock IP, and they licensed the third game to Otherside. Otherside supposedly owns the copyright of the third game, but who knows what they wrote in the contracts.

For the fate of SS3, I think it's natural that Starbreeze wants and needs to at least recoup $10M they've already poured, by releasing the game by themselves or selling the publishing rights.

 

[Zep Zepo]

For the fate of SS3, I think it's natural that Starbreeze wants and needs to at least recoup $10M they've already poured,

Where does it say they got the full 10 mil in one shot? I kinda doubt they were stupid enough (SB) to do that. Promised not equal given.

Zep--

 

[LESS T_T]

For the fate of SS3, I think it's natural that Starbreeze wants and needs to at least recoup $10M they've already poured,

Where does it say they got the full 10 mil in one shot? I kinda doubt they were stupid enough (SB) to do that. Promised not equal given.

Zep--

Their balance sheet, revealed with the reconstruction plans:

https://www.starbreeze.com/sbz-media/2018/12/Appendix-2-Balance-reports.pdf

Starbreeze Publishing AB Balans (Standard 2)

Intangible assets
: Concessions, patents, licenses, trademarks and similar rights

[...]

Nov/2018 Nov/2017
10809 - Psychonauts Advanced Royalty 62,097,265 28,447,872
10810 - System Shock 3 Advanced Royalty 68,145,195 25,763,404

(In Swedish Krona)

 

[Zep Zepo]

Also, from the balance sheet the money is listed in "Intangible Assets". That "money" is vaporware as far as we know.

Zep--