Thema: Catalyst going Belly-Up!

Dumpshock

OK, as you may well have been able to surmise from release schedules, Catalyst Game Labs is in a bit of a financial pickle, and it is somewhat unlikely that they will retain the license to make Shadowrun products. This is not because Shadowrun hasn't been selling enough to cover expenses, but merely because a significant quantity of money is missing outright. Reliable sources put this figure at roughly $850,000. Which sounds like a lot, and it is. It is roughly 40% of Catalyst's entire sales for last year, missing over a three year period. There will of course be lawsuits, and there are already people drawing up legal documents accusing Loren Coleman of having hired people to construct an extension on his house through the company as "freelance writers" and somehow reporting an estimated $100,000 of convention sales as $6,000. Whether that is actually true or not is - of course - a matter for the courts to decide. And decide they presumably will.

But what that means for Catalyst as a company is pretty bad. It costs several dollars to print a book even when the pdfs are finished and ready for publication. A print run of say, 50,000 books (like the print run of Runner Havens) would cost somewhere between $150,000 and $250,000 to print and ship to distributors. And while it eventually sold to distributors at ~$15 a book (a total take home of $750,000), it did so over a period of three years, during which time they were paying interest on loans and paying for storage, and advertisement and so on and so forth. A book like that isn't actually taking home half a million in profits. Which is a bad thing, because it means that even if there was a complete book printed and ready to sell, even a total and rapid sell through would not pull the company out of the financial hole it is in - and the shortfall means that it does not have the cash on hand to start the ball rolling with a new major printing.

The tiny amount of drachmas that are left in the coffers are being used to print up tiny print runs of books that have sold through - another 3,000 books of Runner's Companion for example (~$15,000 to start up, maybe $30-40k towards paying creditors if it sells out). There simply is not the startup cash to bring upcoming books like the SR4 sixth world almanac or corporate guide forward. The writing is there, but the printing costs are not. Beyond that, the freelancers have not been paid, and some of them are withholding copyright until they are - meaning that even a tiny print run of these new materials is simply not possible.

Many SR writers are quitting, have already quit, or have handed in notices contingent on demands which - word on the street - will not be met. And CGL does not even own Shadowrun, it leases the intellectual property from Topps. It seems unlikely that they will be able to make their licensing payment when the contract comes up for renewal - in a couple of months. At that time, CGL will cease being able to print Shadowrun or Battletech materials (they would presumably keep the license to Cthulhutech and Eclipse Phase for at least a little while longer, because those are separate contracts).

So what does this mean for the future of Shadowrun? It probably means that someone else will create a company and start making Shadowrun again. After all, freelancers work for very little, and a well selling book can bring in tens of thousands of dollars in profits. $850,000 of embezzlement is seemingly enough to sink the company (whoever ended up with the credsticks), but I must point out that there was indeed eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars to steal, so Shadowrun is not - as a concept - insoluble. And I also point out that something similar happened to Shadowrun before. Indeed, twice before, as both FanPro and FASA before it collapsed under the weight of people not paying debts and having bags with dollar bill signs vanish mysteriously in the middle of the night. It's somewhat... poetic considering the subject matter of the game itself.

It is entirely probable indeed that when a new company comes to take the licence, many familiar faces will appear in the new company as if they had never left. Certainly back when FanPro collapsed back when I was working for the company, I simply started working for the new company as if nothing had changed. This happened back when FASA collapsed as well - those members of the team that were not extracted by Microsoft simply started turning in writing assignments to the new boss.

And yeah, I regularly go on shadowruns against Catalyst to find out what new releases are in store. Don't you?

-Frank

Adam Jury

Ich bin nicht überrascht.

Und doch.. irgendwie schon... ich meine... bedenkt man FASA und Fanpro...

It's somewhat... poetic considering the subject matter of the game itself.

Wie wahr... wie wahr.

Hmm, versaut meinen Schedule. Aber solange es noch neuen Stoff gibt... ppfffttt

Das könnte man in einem SR-Run verbraten. Magisch verfluchte Lizenzrechte, die Cons untergehen lassen
Ein gewisses Maß an Ironie hat das Ganze schon

ääääh mein englisch ist sehr grottig, könnte es jemand nur kurz mich erklären (1-2 Sätze) was da drinne steht?
Bitte

850,000 $ fehlen bei Catalyst und sind wahrscheinlich zum Teil von Loren Coleman veruntreut worden.
Weil Catalyst mit einer Buchauflage nicht mal die Hälfte dieser Summe einnimmt und abgesehen davon keine Barreserven mehr hat, gehen die jetzt wohl kaputt. Shadowrun wird sehr wahrscheinlich dennoch weitergehen, weil es sich gut genug verkauft.

Sicher Rinas...

Jemand in Catalyst hat sich mit $850,000 Dollar aus dem staub gemacht weshalb die Firma wohl pleite ist und deshalb kaum die Lizensgebühren oder Freelance Schreiber bezahlen kann.

Mit anderen Worten... Catalyst geht den selben weg den schon Fasa und Fanpro gegangen ist... abgezockt und ausgeraubt von Insidern

Press Release

Heftig. Wenigstens haben sie uns in der Not ein paar Zahlen hinterlassen, die man verinnerlichen sollte.

A print run of say, 50,000 books (like the print run of Runner Havens) would cost somewhere between $150,000 and $250,000 to print and ship to distributors. And while it eventually sold to distributors at ~$15 a book (a total take home of $750,000), it did so over a period of three years, during which time they were paying interest on loans and paying for storage, and advertisement and so on and so forth. [...]

The tiny amount of drachmas that are left in the coffers are being used to print up tiny print runs of books that have sold through - another 3,000 books of Runner's Companion for example (~$15,000 to start up, maybe $30-40k towards paying creditors if it sells out).

Also Runner Havens hat (hätte gehabt) eine Auflage von 50.000 Stück. Die Kosten für Druck und Versand wären nur 3-5 $ gewesen (da stimmt doch was nicht!) und der VK an den Distributor läge bei 15 $. Wobei dieses Geld erst in Laufe der nächsten 3 Jahre reinkommt (da stimmt wohl auch was nicht, weil man ja nicht ausschließlich Kommissionsgeschäfte macht).

Naja hat sich was mit den Zahlen.^^

Aber wer käme in Frage die Lizenz von Topps zu holen. Und wäre das eine schnelle Übernahme oder wieder so ein langwieriger Prozess wie bei der Übernahme von Wizkids?