Game publisher Starbreeze will not last a year due to money shortages

Game publisher Starbreeze is in such bad shape that it is not certain that it can continue to run for another year. The Swedish company expects a liquidity shortage, or a shortage of cash, before the month of June is over.

Starbreeze is still looking for ways to get more money, it writes in the financial report for the first quarter of 2019. It says that during that period it made a gross loss of about 15,000,000 euros. Interim CEO Mikael Nemark calls the situation ‘challenging’. PayDay 2 still provides stable income for Starbreeze.

However, there are several factors that cause loss. The company has been restructuring since December, which should only start yielding savings in the course of 2019 and cost money in the meantime. In addition, withdrawing Overkill’s The Walking Dead from the market is a financial downer, since the costs have already been incurred but the revenues are not forthcoming.

Starbreeze has also sold properties, but that has not yet yielded the necessary results. The sale of the System Shock 3 license has not yet delivered as much as expected, as Starbreeze has not been compensated for the work it has done to date, which it expects from the buyer. The same goes for 10 Crowns.

Starbreeze has been around since 1998 and is known for Payday 2, The Chronicles of Riddick, Syndicate and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. The well-known game studio Overkill Software has been a subsidiary of Starbreeze since 2012.