The new Ghostbusters game based on the new movie launched on July 12th to a very poor reception and on July 15th the studio behind the game, Fireforge Games filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy it has been reported by Kotaku.
Fileforge Games are $12million in debt and have been liquidating assets in order to pay off their debt. An insight into the failings of Fireforge games was given by a team member who worked on the new Ghostbusters title who claimed it was developed in just 8 months.
Fireforge has a troubled past and are battling with their own ghosts after two MOBA-like projects being cancelled and some lawsuits. One of the failed projects code-named Atlas, was funded by Chinese publisher Tencent of whom filings show Fireforge owe £11.3million and the other code-named Zeus had a publishing deal with hardware company Razer. A lawsuit followed after Razer owner Min-Liang Tan claimed Fireforge failed to deliver on their contract and instead used money to fund their other project Atlas. Fireforge claim however that development of Atlas only began after Razer pulled funding.
Another lawsuit was raised against Fireforge by lawyer Richard Land who was responsible for selling the games and IP of 38 Studios after its closure. The claim from Land states that Fireforge had signed a deal to license 38 Studio’s proprietary social media platform Helios in a deal worth $3.7million, however Fireforge allegedly back tracked and hired ex-employees from 38 Studios to build their own version instead.
