We named the sad death of Marvel Heroes the greatest MMO disappointment of 2017, and it appears it’s not even over yet. Redditors noticed that on January 4th, three creditors – Secret 6, Playchemy, and Caitlin Capes – filed claim against the assets of Gazillion, or rather, whatever is left to fight over following the company’s apparent collapse last year.
Secret 6 appears to be a multinational game dev studio known best for its art production (Ronald Schaffner is its president), while Playchemy is a mobile development studio. Caitlin Capes’ linkedin shows her as having been an associate producer on Marvel Heroes as well as on the multiplatform VR game Gazillion was reportedly working on. In total, MMO Fallout reports, the three are claiming nearly $700,000 in unpaid debt, the bulk of which is allegedly owed to Playchemy.
I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll defer to the experts on what exactly an “involuntary bankruptcy” filing means:
“An involuntary case against a person is commenced by the filing with the bankruptcy court of a petition under chapter 7 or 11 of this title (1) by three or more entities, each of which is either a holder of a claim against such person that is not contingent as to liability or the subject of a bona fide dispute as to liability or amount, or an indenture trustee representing such a holder, if such noncontingent, undisputed claims aggregate at least $10,000 more than the value of any lien on property of the debtor securing such claims held by the holders of such claims.”
You’ll recall that a representative for Marvel and Disney announced the end-of-2017 closure of the game along with the termination of its partnership with Gazillion back in November, following a disturbing multi-week company silence broken only by documented accusations that the CEO of Gazillion had engaged in “inappropriate conduct” toward female employees. But in fact, the game silently shut down just days later, with the only warning given by anonymous employees who revealed that the company had fired nearly everyone without proper benefits, suggesting that creditors had effectively pulled the plug on the company. A former employee later confirmed the bankruptcy assumption.
