Mastertronic is teetering on the brink of going out of business as stated by Founder Andy Payne. Payne has said that a meeting is being held within the upcoming month where he hopes to discuss new terms with the company’s creditors that will allow Mastertronic to stay afloat.
This isn’t the first time Mastertronic has reached out to creditors, apparently the same thing was done a “few months back” and they managed to gain a large amount support but one creditor went legal and wanted a repayment for a loan made by Mastertronic back in 2013. This is what resulted in the dissolution order - This is why the company is in the process of establishing a Company Voluntary Agreement with creditors, even though there is a subsequent ruling in its favor in regards to the renegade creditor.
“To be taken to the brink of being wound up and then suddenly told we were being granted more time, stinks of brinkmanship and it has not impressed me or my remaining team all of whom were told last week that they were under threat of redundancy,” Payne said.
The meeting with the creditors is due to take place on August 11th. The closure of its Cambridgeshire HQ, an exit from the physical market and a 40 per cent reduction in staff is also unfortunately planned and we give our sympathies to all those affected.
“We knew that the business models we had been supporting were becoming unsustainable for us and some of our partners. Yes, we had to ‘leave money on the table’ and walk away from some of the nonsense deals that we were offered. So, we decided to reduce any reliance on retail packaged goods and thus in February we parted ways with our retail sales team who set themselves up to fulfill the remaining demand from packaged goods retailers. In our opinion, the business models at retail for packaged goods are simply unsustainable for a company like Mastertronic.”, Payne added.
“The publishing of packaged console games that we selected in the past was no longer economic – if indeed it ever was. All packaged goods console publishing involves payment in advance to platform holders and that puts a terrible pressure on anyone’s cash flow. We got caught in the cross fire of the new gen of consoles pushing the current/old gen out superfast.
“Furthermore, PC budget games are now sold online digitally, as we all know, and there is no longer a real appetite or indeed the specialist retailers who can sell PC games in sufficient volumes to keep the parties interested.”
More recently, the company has been responsible for publishing Concursion (you can read our review here), Deadly Premonition: Director’s Cut on PC in Europe, and were set to publish the upcoming Dream - Hypersloth’s in-development debut which takes advantage of the Oculus Rift.
Oliver Zimmerman
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