Starbreeze is in trouble after The Walking Dead underperforms

Down but not out

Payday publisher Starbreeze is seemingly struggling as of late. The Swedish game developer has filed for reconstruction due to a shortage of liquid assets — capital that can be near-immediately turned into cash.

As part of the reconstruction process, Starbreeze has ousted CEO Bo Andersson. Additionally, Andersson and Kristofer Arwin have relinquished their seats on the board of directors. Starbreeze has removed its financial targets for fiscal years 2018 and 2020 as a result of this restructuring.

While the press release doesn’t exhaustively detail what led to this outcome, it does mention that disappointing initial sales of Overkill’s The Walking Dead helped put the company in this position. “However, with the latest statistics from Overkill’s The Walking Dead (including effects from latest marketing efforts) affecting the forecasted sales, it has reduced the short-term forecasted revenue resulting in an expected shortfall of cash in January 2019,” Starbreeze says.

It should be noted that this isn’t dire straits for Starbreeze. There’s a freeze on outstanding debts to vendors, but employees will continue receiving their paychecks and operations will proceed as normal. If this tactic is successful, Starbreeze notes that it’ll be able to “negotiate a long-term financial solution” and, ideally, have the publisher humming along again.

Starbreeze AB (publ) including five Swedish subsidiaries have today filed for reconstruction [Starbreeze]