UPDATE: SG Gaming Info reports that the bankruptcy filing has been rejected, because it was filed by the company’s fired (still disputed) former CEO Gary Whiting, along with a quote on the matter from current chief Tim Jenson. CME was not able to verify this development to GateWorld.
The story of the studio behind the new Stargate PC game Stargate: Resistance and the highly anticipated MMO Stargate Worlds has taken another downturn. Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on February 12.
Phoenix, Arizona-based CME has faced mounting financial problems in recent years, with the global financial crisis resulting in layoffs and delays to the originally intended publishing schedule. Without a product on the market to earn the company revenue, it has had to rely on investors to get Worlds and Resistance to market.
Stargate: Resistance, a third-person online shooter, went live on February 10.
Chapter 11 does not mean that CME is down for the count, however. Unlike other forms of bankruptcy filing, Chapter 11 allows a business to remain in operation — and in control of its business decisions — under the oversight of the courts.
The filing does not absolve the studio of its debt, and does not mean the doors close or work on the game titles stops.
The studio has released the following statement about the new turn of events:
Cheyenne Mountain’s corporate structure has undergone some dramatic changes in the last few weeks, and that has resulted in various actions such as the filing for Chapter 11. Certain parties believed that was the right thing to do, other parties do not and this is still being evaluated and may be rescinded. Even if the bankruptcy should go through, however, Chapter 11 simply allows a company to restructure its debt to a manageable plan approved by the courts. It does not absolve a company of debt, and it does not shut it down or otherwise affect its daily operations.
This will all be sorted out in the legal and proper manner, and all of us on the development side of things hope it’s done as quickly as possible.
That said, our entire staff is in-house working on upgrades and expansions for Stargate Resistance, and we continue to be motivated and excited by the response we’ve received from our customers.
Stick with GateWorld for further developments. Stargate: Resistance is now available at Direct2Drive.com.
(Thanks to Metonic, Madwelshboy, Andrew, Jayson and Doug for the tip)
Oh boy..
Exactly, oh boy… When’s is this downfall for the franchise going to end?
How about letting fans contribute somehow? We managed to rise money for various reasons, why not now for CME?
Quote from a Firesky staff member:
“Think this came as a shock to a lot of people, no surprise there. The hope, and stated interest, is that through this process (or reversal?), the developers and the game(s) will survive.”
I’d like to point out that if you’d like to buy Stargate: Resistance, it’s also available from Steam and Firesky’s website.
Oh wow, what a shock. More bad financial news. Didn’t see that coming…
I have to say, they could have started small for the first Stargate game based on the TV show. An MMO is very expensive.
In fact, any game development requires long-term thinking. Cause in 4 years who knows what’s going to happen. As much as I want to support these folks, I don’t see any appeal of Resistance. I am not a fan of competitive gaming.
Good Luck, CME!
Unfortunately, Stargate Resistance is unplayable for most of the world outside of the US. The servers are all hosted in the US, so any players not in the US (eg. UK and Europe) are getting 200ms+ pings. For gamers used to between 20-50ms, it’s near unplayable.
Unfortunately CME have lost a huge proportion of the customer base due to this foolish decision to not allow third parties to run gameservers (unlike every other online PC shooter that uses a server).
There’s been a whole lot more to this story popping up over the last few days. In a nut shell, Cheyenne Entertainment have fired their own CEO and are taking him to court over misleading and fraudulent activities… and apparently he has a past history of this O_o
link
How he got the job in the first place is a huge mystery to me after reading this!
@Murray-Mint Even though there currently only are US server there haven’t been that many complaints of lag by international players. I personally haven’t had any big issues thus far and I’m from the UK.
Let’s see:
The game developers file for bankruptcy.
MGM is up for sale.
All the props are being auctioned off.
Michael Shanks talked about no more movies.
SGU discs are being sold for outrageous prices which means a hard sell.
Sounds like the end of the franchise to me…
Quite frankly I’m tired of hearing of Stargate videogames almost being cancelled because the studios implode on themselves…
It seems to me the survival of a product to retail was in far safer hands when mods were allowed – at least then without a budget, all teams needed to worry about was actually getting it finished!
This francise is just falling like dominos, isn’t? If TPTB had only listedn to the fans, notable those of SGA, perhapes this wouldn’t have happened.
So the company is still in operation but the “entire staff is in-house working on upgrades and expansions for Stargate Resistance”. So does that mean production of SGW has ground to a complete halt?
If so, that’s a major pity for the execs of the tv franchise that put in a lot of time themselves to help out SGW. As we all said (basically from the start) you can’t give such an important initiative for the franchise to an untested company whose only funds were from investors. With no revenue coming in, honestly, how could they expect to finance themselves?
Hmmm…what a sad day. I’ve been waiting for Stargate Worlds for almost 5 years now. I had such high hopes for the game, but now have serious doubt I’ll ever see my hopes and the Dev’s team’s hard work come to fruitation.
sad day for the franchise, but im glad to be honest – just because you have access to an intellectual property does not mean you get permission to make shoddy games that are dated, buggy, and poorly designed and try to flog them off to the public. The franchise deserves better quality – until a reputable developer comes along and picks up the license, i wouldnt hold your breath for anything worthwhile to come out. Either that, or go look at the mod scene – plenty of good mods being made/already made on moddb.com … its just sad that the… Read more »
LOL. now if only sgu would get canceled.
@grif We’ll probably read the article about it on August 21 or 22.
@gkarris The Stargate discs are always getting a Hardsell every 3 or 4 months in the Australia, doesn’t mean that the show isn’t supported heavily over here. @rsharpe How is a new show that has no monetary connection to the dev company responsible for the lose of investors? Please tell me. granted you could argue that less people would be willing to put money in because of falling ratings for the show. My question then would be, how did Star Trek Online come about? @Siba The show has a second season, so I doubt that they will decide to cancel… Read more »
@canonfodder:
I know, I’m talking about season 3. I was ironically referring to the cancellation of SG1 and SGA that both got cancelled around the 20th of August. I didn’t want to sound like a scryer though ;)
honestly ive been both a stargate fan and video game fan as far as i can remember and i was never thrilled at what CME was trying to do. I think they should have simply started with a good old FPS or TPS based on the original SG1 series and some SGA to test the customers, once this is done THEN go big but you have to put something out, i have lost complete interest in stargate games because there are NONE. how can you be a game studio for years and not have released a single game (until now).… Read more »
Well I read more this. The crisis hit on MGM wich mean the movies. And hit Cheyen Mountain investors. Some companies get hit by the crysis. Espacialy those producing luxory items. Lot of studio’s got laid of by there big publishers. So the crisis do hit the game industry and movie bussnes a bit. Crysis mean lot of average project who seem to generate profits before crysis are now to risky. investor and publsiher back out of those titles. There are lot of canceled games due to this. Only some Triple A games look healthy for investors. So getting funds… Read more »
Well, again, this doesn’t surprise me. With all the financial woes of this franchise i’ll be surprised if its still standing two years from now.
“LOL. now if only sgu would get canceled. grif”
“@grif We’ll probably read the article about it on August 21 or 22. Siba”
Good… I say stop throwing good money at Stargate Galactica (err, Universe) and spend the money and time instead on SG1 and SGA movies…
@gkarris It isn’t anything like Battlestar Overactica. You’re just repeating the same baseless talking point. Where’s the hammy over acting? Where’s the inexplicable acts? Where’s the ghost of Anne Coulter preaching to a weepy British guy? Where’s the anachronistic culture and clothing, and fake cuss words? Where’s the bigotry against pagans? Nowhere because SGU is nothing like BSG.
Wow. Totally a shocker, there. Couldn’t have seen that coming. FPS? Something that has a single player and plot and story? No, that’s not how you do it. Crappy graphics with no advertising, no story, no consoles (would you pay 60 bucks…?). Hell, yeah, let’s do this s-HEY! Where’d all our money go?
Just wanted to say a few things. First I really don’t have an interest in playing this game. I am too old. But, I do play online very often. I fly flight sims. Many of the servers are overseas, and there is no problems, the technology works great! Also, amy of the code developers are in Russia who cod the sims and games, and they do a wonderful job and turn out some the the best flight sims. They also turn out some great fps shooters. STALKER is a great example. So, there is hope if they know what they… Read more »
Another failed Stargate game. This is becoming a pattern now.
The next Stargate game, if they ever do one, should be a single player player adventure with no end that the community can make mods for. The player could be one of many races, with its own game start and objectives. The developers could make like 10 worlds to visit, the rest could be made by the players, and with no ending, it would satisfy the roleplay the fans desperately needs. Imagine being an Asgaard, or a Goa’uld, or a SG Team Leader, or whatever, roaming open worlds like Oblivion or Fallout3, where you can do whatever you want. I… Read more »
As cold as it sounds, good. Companies like this bank on the titles popularity to grab as much money as they can and give a crap game. Monolith did it with Matrix Online, SOE did it with Star Wars Galaxies and CME was doing it with SGW. MMOs based on a movie or tv show are destined for failure and I have yet to see a successful one. Companies that take advantage of a title instead of putting forth the effort to develop a good game get no sympathy from me.
@Gaeth – LOL (nice post… ;) )
I stand corrected – I guess SGU is only barely half like the new BSG…
SGU is “we try really, but really hard to be BSG but alas, we really suck at it”
Sorry to hear about CME though.
Really not sure why people are talking about SGU here. Anyway there filing for a Chapter 11. Chapter 11 does not mean that there bankrupt, it allows them to organise there debt and restructure the company to allow there plans to go forward. They fired there CEO Gary Whiting and are taking him to court for demonstrated financial damages and mis-handling. If they succeed he will inherit some of CME’s debt. There is still hope that the company will survive this. If worse came to worse im sure another company would jump at the chance to use the Stargate IP… Read more »
“Really not sure why people are talking about SGU here.”
Because that would be the next and last thing to cancel, making Stargate but a mere memory and nothing but re-runs… :(
New light has come on the chapter 11 stuff, it has being revealed that CME didn’t file for Ch.11, but the ex CEO did for CME the ch.11 was rejected because the CEO was no longer a part of CME so he could not do this. http://www.sggaminginfo.com/?p=258
HAHA Funny!