midway-games posts

Midway continues to lay off workers just days after most of its assets and two of its development studios were bought out by Warner Bros. Interactive. Today in a new filing for the US Securities and Exchange Commission Midway revealed it has given a 60 day shut down notice to the 60 employees of its Chicago headquaters. The offices are expected to close by September 13.

The Chicago headquarters are separate from Midway's development studios in the same city which was bought out by Warner Bros. and where work continues on the next Mortal Kombat game. The fate of Midway's remaining development studio in San Diego remains unknown.

[Via Gamespot]

After losing its shirt, pants and nearly its underpants for years (financially speaking of course) Midway's is now selling off at least part of their company. Today the company announced that Warner Bros. Entertainment has entered a "asset purchase agreement" with Midway to the tune of $33 million.

That price will nab Warner Bros. quite a few of Midway's US assets. That includes the company's Chicago and Seattle based development studios and the Mortal Kombat fighting game franchise. However it does not include Midway's San Diego studio nor its UK based studio (where the recently released Wheelman game was made). The price is basically a "starting bid" for Warner Bros. Other companies now have 30 days to offer up any competing bids.

It's bad enough that game publisher Midway is going through a painful Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Now it appears there may be something of a mystery to solve as well. Not a Jessica Fletcher-type murder to solve but rather a case of identity. Specifically, who is Mark Thomas?

You may remember that a man named Mark Thomas was the person who bought the shares of Midway stock, totalling 87 percent of the company, from Sumner Redstone for a mere $100,000 late last year. That also included $70 million in debt. According to the Chicago Tribune, "Of the $70 million in debt that Thomas took over from Redstone, $30 million is a secured claim that puts him ahead of unsecured creditors, including holders of the convertible debt."

Other bondholders have filed an objection in bankruptcy court saying that Thomas could get a ton of money, far more than the $100,000 he paid Redstone, if he got back even a small portion of that $30 million. Adding to the issue is that no one seems to know who this guy actually is. According to the story, "From the beginning, Thomas has not disclosed even basic information about himself, such as where he resides or his professional background." Does this sound like a Law and Order case or what?

We won't go over the issues Midway has had over the past year. We have covered them extensively. However, the publisher's line-up for the future already looks better, at least according to the creative director for Midway's upcoming action-driving game Wheelman.

Videogamer.com spoke with Midway's Simon Woodroffe who stated, "I just saw a demo of a new Midway game that's in development. I can't tell you too much about it, but they've been on it for three months and it looks as good if not better than Gears 2." He later added, "Midway have got a really cool game, not the one I'm talking about but another one, a really cool game coming out of Chicago using the shared technology. It's probably not due until 2010, and the same goes for the one I'm talking about." The shared technology is of course Epic's Unreal Engine which has been used by Midway for a lot of their past and future titles.