Developer of Ghostbusters game files for bankruptcy three days after its release

[midian182]

You may have noticed that there’s been a bit of controversy surrounding the recent Ghostbusters reboot. But while the movie seems to have received more positive reviews than negative ones, everyone agrees that the video game tie-in is awful. Now, it’s been revealed that just three days after its release, the development studio behind the game filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

As reported by Kotaku’s Jason Schreier, Fireforge Games’ Ghostbusters title was released alongside the movie on July 12 to overwhelmingly negative reviews, receiving an average rating of 41/100 from publications and a user score of 0.3/10, according to Metacritic.

The fact that the twin-stick shooter was developed in under eight months is likely one of the main reasons why it turned out so bad. On July 15, Fireforge started bankruptcy proceedings, but this had little relation to Ghostbusters’ poor reception and sales.

The studio, which was founded by ex-Blizzard employee Tim Campbell in 2011, had been embroiled in several lawsuits. Fireforge had worked on two unreleased MOBAs over the last five years. The first, codenamed Zeus, was to be published by hardware company Razer; the second, this one codenamed Atlas, was funded by Tencent. The Chinese publishing behemoth, which owns League of Legends developer Riot Games, has a 37 percent stake in Fireforge.

The bankruptcy filings show that Fireforge owes around $11.3 million to Tencent, and is also involved in a lawsuit with Min Productions - a company owned by Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan.

Tan says Fireforge used the money it was given to complete Zeus to work on Atlas, though the US firm claims it only started working on the Tencent title once Min Productions stopped paying it.

Additionally, Fireforge was sued in 2015 by lawyer Richard Land, who was selling off the games and IPs of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning developer 38 Studios. He claims Fireforge signed a contract to license 38 Studios’ social media platform, Helios, for $3.7 million, but instead used the money to hire former employees of the defunct company and develop a similar platform of its own.

So while the Ghostbusters game’s failure wasn’t directly responsible for Fireforge’s bankruptcy, it may have bought the studio a little more time had it been successful.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/65790-developer-ghostbusters-game-filed-bankruptcy-three-days-after.html

 

[fps4ever]

The positive movie reviews are a lie. They didn't want to upset the feminist movement. Look at total dollars accumulated so far, that tells it all.

 

[VitalyT]

Franchise Busters, more like, both on screen and PC-s, with predictable consistency.

Some stories are best left in the past...

 

[mbrowne5061]

...Some stories are best left in the past...

It wasn't so much that it should have been left in the past - or 'not all women cast'. They could have made that work as 'their daughters/nieces inheriting the family business, and not being complete f*** ups'. The problem is that they made ALL the characters unimaginative and overused archetypes, with no real personalities or motivations. The movie tried to thrive on cut-and-paste one-liners and toilet humor, instead quick wit, clever jokes, and the original situational humor that punctuated the original franchise.

 

[VitalyT]

It wasn't so much that it should have been left in the past - or 'not all women cast'. They could have made that work as 'their daughters/nieces inheriting the family business, and not being complete f*** ups'. The problem is that they made ALL the characters unimaginative and overused archetypes, with no real personalities or motivations. The movie tried to thrive on cut-and-paste one-liners and toilet humor, instead quick wit, clever jokes, and the original situational humor that punctuated the original franchise.

I think it is not the actors to blame, it is whoever put that cast together. Melissa McCarthy, for example, she played it like she plays everything else, with toilet humor being her thing. She is not a f.-up, she just doesn't belong to that kind of movie.

 

[texasrattler]

It's not the cast that was the problem. Granted I only have ever heard of 2 of the female characters prior to hearing about the movie. 2 of them are comedians. Both are funny.
It's the story that sucked. I do agree with mbrowne, would have been a better story had it been about their daughters taking over the business not some random crap that looked like it had been thrown together at the last minute. It just didn't work. How the hell do people not follow up with tie ins? You have a potential money making movie but allow a sh*t game to come out? That's sad and can even make your movie worse, especially if people have not seen it. Word of mouth can be great or it can be very bad. In some cases it can even make or break you.

 

[mantissteam]

Lol

 

[EndlessWaves]

Has any Ghostbusters game been good?

I remember one from a few years ago that was such a bad console port that they left the deadzone in for the mouse. The game wouldn't respond unless your mouse was moving faster than a certain speed. You had to minimise it by cranking up mouse DPI and dropping down in-game sensitivity and even then it was so frustrating that I gave up on it after a couple of levels.

IIRC Sanctum of Slime a couple of years later received pretty dire reviews too.

 

[mbrowne5061]

I think it is not the actors to blame, it is whoever put that cast together. Melissa McCarthy, for example, she played it like she plays everything else, with toilet humor being her thing. She is not a f.-up, she just doesn't belong to that kind of movie.

I completely agree - just to be clear when I said "they" I meant the director, producer, casting, writers, etc. Actors/Actresses do their best with what they are given. Ultimately, most of the blame is to be laid at the feet the director - who selected the producers, writers, casting managers.

 

[DAOWAce]

..was such a bad console port that they left the deadzone in for the mouse. The game wouldn't respond unless your mouse was moving faster than a certain speed. You had to minimise it by cranking up mouse DPI and dropping down in-game sensitivity and even then it was so frustrating that I gave up on it after a couple of levels.

Sounds like a lot of console ports, especially by japanese developers *cough* dark souls, metal gear rising, etc *cough*

Ruined a lot of games.

 

[JacekM]

...Some stories are best left in the past...

It wasn't so much that it should have been left in the past - or 'not all women cast'. They could have made that work as 'their daughters/nieces inheriting the family business, and not being complete f*** ups'. The problem is that they made ALL the characters unimaginative and overused archetypes, with no real personalities or motivations. The movie tried to thrive on cut-and-paste one-liners and toilet humor, instead quick wit, clever jokes, and the original situational humor that punctuated the original franchise.

What would you expect from feminist movement? Clever jokes? Are you joking?

 

[Someone8MyPosts]

Has any Ghostbusters game been good?

I remember one from a few years ago that was such a bad console port that they left the deadzone in for the mouse. The game wouldn't respond unless your mouse was moving faster than a certain speed. You had to minimise it by cranking up mouse DPI and dropping down in-game sensitivity and even then it was so frustrating that I gave up on it after a couple of levels.

IIRC Sanctum of Slime a couple of years later received pretty dire reviews too.

The vast majority of games based on movies have sucked. What I've seen is the fact that most are thrown together junk that has no real basis for being a game and is often developed by crap studios that could provide the cheapest cost to the IP owner and/or movie producers. Their thought seems to be the movie will sell the game and the game will sell the movie. After falling for this once semi-successful business tactic and finding it grotesquely unethical, I realized I should wait and see. That approach has served me very well in every instance, so far.

 

[Someone8MyPosts]

Simply push a somewhat decent looking movie trailer and hire a budget studio to create a god awful game with a cool-looking box and tag it with a big publisher's name to get people to buy them.