It's been a rough couple of years for Starbreeze Studios, the Swedish publisher and developer best known for the Payday series. And the rough times look they are about to get rougher. Recently, the company provided its Q1 2019 earnings report, and in it, it was pretty frank about its future. According to Starbreeze, it's expecting to have a "liquidity shortfall" very soon if no additional funds are pumped into the company. This news comes off record low operating profits for the quarter. So, what does this mean? Well, it's very possible it will be closing its doors before the year is over.

“My main task is to secure financing for the company’s future operations,” said temporary CEO, Mikael Nermark. “This involves both long-term financing we can use to build the Starbreeze of the future, but also making sure that the assets we have determined are unrelated to the core business are managed in a commercially viable way. Once this financing has been secured, we will be able to look ahead and present a more detailed strategy for the future.

“Starbreeze and some of its subsidiaries have been in reconstruction since 3 December 2018. The company currently lacks sufficient secured funds to guarantee continued operations for the next 12 months and is expected to have a liquidity shortfall before mid-year 2019 if no additional funds are provided. These conditions indicate that there are significant uncertainties that can lead to significant doubts about the company’s ability to continue its business.”

If Starbreeze goes under, it will bring a lot of employees with it. The company currently staffs 580 employees, which is down from last year, but still a very big number. Founded in 1998, Starbreeze currently has no announced games in development, and publishing wise, only has Double Fine's Psychonauts 2 in the pipeline, which is scheduled to release sometime this year via the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Posted: May 15, 2019 3:59 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2019/05/13/starbreeze-payday-studio-shutdown-2019/