The latest Ghostbusters movie tie-in game developed by Fireforge Games wasn't by any means a masterpiece, and our review made that painfully clear. But as it turns out the studio responsible was in a rather dire situation. According to Kotaku, Fireforge declared bankruptcy on July 15, as they are unable to repay a huge debt of $12 million.
From what we've learned, the outfit declared bankruptcy just three days after the launch of the game (published on July 12). Clearly, the circumstances for the developing the title weren't great, and even if it had been a huge success it's hard to see FireForge Games making it (as they would only have seen royalty payments further down the line).
But the misfortune of FireForge Games is hardly down to Ghostbusters. Founded in Irvine, California, by former Blizzard employee Tim Campbell in 2011, Fireforge started and stopped production of at least two MOBA-like projects in the last five years. One of those games, codenamed Zeus, should have been published by hardware company Razer. The other game, codenamed Atlas, was funded by the Chinese publisher Tencent, which also owns a 37% stake in Fireforge. In addition, the studio has been entangled in a lawsuit with a private company based in Singapore called Productions Min, owned by Razer's CEO, Min-Liang Tan properties.
Tan claims that Fireforge didn't respect the deal during the development of Zeus, and instead they used the money they got from Razer to work on Atlas with Tencent. Fireforge, on the other hand, says that they only started working on Atlas once Razer had stopped paying them. The case is currently pending as Fireforge sort through their bankruptcy proceedings.
Fireforge CEO Tim Campbell hasn't released any comment on the matter.