38 Studios - Honesty

I read about situations like these and it is beyond disappointing. Regardless of what  type of business they worked in, I believe these people deserved a lot more explanation a lot earlier.

if only they had consulted the armchair experts on the internet, none of this would of happened

What possible explanation is owed to random people on a message board? The GB community isn't in the business nor should they care what we think about how they ran the company.

i think they give explanations to workers when a company is going belly up but i'm not exzctly sure they just don't release them to the press

   
No explanation is needed. Patrick had a story linked at the bottom of his Worth Reading. If they want us to read about it I am sure they would hope we would have civil conversations and opinions abou it. 

I'm assuming you mean that they botched the way they handled telling their employees?

If management had known this was going to happen, they would have stopped hiring and would have started laying off people a long time ago.

I'm sure some of their financing had fallen through very close to the collapse, but we'll never know what happened until they come out and say.

No doubt this sort of thing happens all the time in other industries, it just never gets talked about because most industries/companies don't have a fanbase.

@gunninkr said:

I read about situations like these and it is beyond disappointing. Regardless of what type of business they worked in, I believe these people deserved a lot more explanation a lot earlier.

Absolutely, regardless of the executives higher up really hoping for everything to pull through in the long run, the individual employees should have been given a more moment to moment idea of the real state the company was in. The studio had to know months before any of this that the money situation was looking grim, and that it was in the realm of possibility that they wouldnt get a second state sanctioned loan. If they were going to renege on the deal where they moved all of these people at the cost of the company, they should have at least told them as soon as possible themselves instead of just waiting for the people to get billed. If they were going to let the healthcare run out without paying it, they should have told the people working for them to go get some check ups while they could. If they were going to run out of money for payroll, or thought maybe they would, they should have informed the workers that it was coming. The video game industry is always tumultuous, and I'm sure many of the developers working on the game have been through rough or lean times before on other projects, but they still should have been informed better about the conditions in which they were working before they were just laid off nearly a month after their paychecks had ended.

Patrick made this point on the bombcast and i agree with him. you tell the press how much a family 38 studios is and then you don't tell them you are going belly up? there is a disconnect there, but unfortunately that company was like a lot of families: they get divorced, they cheat, they lie, they steal from each other.

@MordeaniisChaos: 
 
Yes, I guess I should have chose a better Topic name. My mistake. I have been involved in things like this on both side of the fence. This whole thing seems very strange and I feel horrible for the employees.  

if only they had consulted the armchair experts on the internet, none of this would of happened

You live by the sword, you die by the sword. They weren't bringing anything new to the table anyway so I'd rather save room for proverbial dessert.

I knew someone who worked there, and from what it sounded like, it was a great company to work for -- which is why the secrecy and sudden closure came as such a shock.

@Kidavenger said:

If management had known this was going to happen, they would have stopped hiring and would have started laying off people a long time ago.

I'm sure some of their financing had fallen through very close to the collapse, but we'll never know what happened until they come out and say.

No doubt this sort of thing happens all the time in other industries, it just never gets talked about because most industries/companies don't have a fanbase.

No, that company was really poorly managed. They kept pushing against an uphill battle and they admitted as much. One does not simply find one's self without capital.

I was half expecting to see a few 38 employees with "Will Code For Food" signs at E3.

Your assumption is that the employees knew when we found out. I doubt that.

I certainly think senior management failed horribly at this company and should be held accountable. Failed in about every basic standard of good business practices, you should never treat your vendors employees, customers and most importantly tax payers so disrespectfully. I have no doubt they kept people in the dark, because they wanted to prevent panic/mass exodus of talent, but to be so in the dark basically means they were lied to. And that is not acceptable.

Senior Mgt had to have known at a bare minimum sometime last summer when they were tagged with a "going concern" warning by their own auditor (and probably knew years before if they were remotely competent) that they were in real financial trouble. That auditor's report was pretty damn clear they needed capital pronto or they were going under.

Certainly I would think twice about hiring any of senior mgt after the way this went down, if I were in a position to do so.

Granted companies make mistakes and fail all the way time, but there are far more honest ways of doing so.

I suspect there may be criminal investigations into this given that so much state money is lost (but probably no convictions given the difficulty of proving such things like this).

@Jimbo said:

@doobie said:

if only they had consulted the armchair experts on the internet, none of this would of happened

That's actually true in this case though.

There is actually some truth in this. I'm sure the CFO and other executives were out to cheat or swindle anyone but slowly slipped into a spiral of lies and mismatching their plans and reality as the situation got more and more dire. It surprising how this happens to even people who consider themselves highly ethical, trusting and upstanding people. They will only tell one more lie or take one more risk after this works...

As things got worse and worse, they became more and more insular. If they actually discussed their situation anyone, including the armchair experts on the internet, it would have easily broken the illusion they built up because just explaining their plan would have shown how ludicrous it was. Trying to explain to outsiders how their plan for success involved going to Rhode Island sounds crazy doesn't it?