"Spartan Games ceases trading" Topic

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Unfortunate news.

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Sorry to hear it. I never got into Firestorm or the Dystopian world but their quality, inventiveness and thoroughness was admirable.

As I said on the other thread, my distributor has been selling their product at 70% off for four or five months. So no surprise.

"All members of staff were made redundant." I think that's British for they were all canned??

I was always surprised by the depth of the lines and the games looked really interesting, but when you started to add up how much you would need to spend for a 6-8 person club game I decided I didn't need a second mortgage on my home!

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And another one on the same day.TOR Gaming

Sad to hear. Again, though their product wasn't my thing, they still enriched our hobby.

Expensive. Scale did not fit well with other SF/fantasy. Probably overextended with all the stuff they offered. Generally did not offer individual items which I would have bought and integrated into my other figures.

Still sad. They certainly were an ambitious company.

Many months ago, I listened to a major USA player in the industry talk about buying lines from Spartan. In this case not for the rules as much as for the established universe the system was set in.
So do not be surprised if the systems and ranges but not all of them are released again.

pzivh43 wrote:

"All members of staff were made redundant." I think that's British for they were all canned??

Yup :( In the US you'd say "Laid off" but that has a very distinct meaning in UK employment law (that whilst no longer paid, there is a prospect of resuming employment within a set period of time).

As an employer that has had to make redundancies in the past, I'm a little shocked to see that "Employees will receive redundancy payments through state funds…" which means that the company had made no provision for an orderly shut down of the firm and to cover its legal employment obligations, which likely means that the company will be forced into administration unless it can rapidly realise its assets – if they have creditors, they are unlikely to get anything because HMRC get first dibs.

I oversaw the liquidation of a family business some years ago and that statement from Spartan was full of contradictions. If the receivers have been called in they have to get their permission to even turn the lights on. They will NOT be posting anything on Tuesday.

If you bought on credit or bank card and haven't got stuff, get on to your bank NOW. Everyone with KS not sent is an unsecured creditor so come last in the list of people who get paid anything.

I would not even be surprised if they ask for an extra payment to release the rulebook. They represent an asset that could be liquidated to yield cash for the secured creditors (banks, HMRC). The question is, do you love the game enough ….. ?

The only possible hope is that this is a voluntary liquidation by a parent company. In which case they might shift the existing stock as a mark of good faith in order to make the IP more saleable. To be honest though I'm not holding out much hope …

I know how hard Directors will work to keep thing going, but my slight sympathy will be destroyed if it transpires that they folded on the Friday before payday – as looks very likely.

The only thing that will make it worse is if there is an announcement next week that the IP has been sold, and that a new webshop is open for orders. Sadly that could happen …

I am sure they have made redundancy provision, even if it was from their own pockets? Anything less would be outrageous. I must state i do not know how many full time employees they have. They might just have had a few part timers who did it for cash in hand and no full timers at all??