Official Announcements, CGL / IMR / Posthuman Studios / Wildfire LLC / etc.. Options

[Method]

Sandstorm:

Lake Stevens, Washington June 10th, 2010

Sandstorm and WildFire – Setting the Gaming Industry Ablaze

Isn’t it strange how you can sit down at a business meeting, and as soon as the zombies start crawling out of the fields of wildflowers, the ties come off and people start having fun? Business in the gaming industry should be about having fun. It should be about making awesome games that people love to play. And, of course, it should be about making good business decisions, even when faced with the rise of unmentionable gods and invading hordes of aliens.

That’s why we at Sandstorm are delighted to announce that we’re joining forces with WildFire to bring a great lineup of games to the gaming industry. From their award winning CthulhuTech game world to new, fun (and rather addictive) games—like Poo—currently available or in production, WildFire has an ambitious plan for future releases. With Sandstorm’s capitalization and production management services, it’s a match made in heaven. Or in monster-strewn hell, depending on your taste. From the moment we joined forces, we’ve hit the ground running to bring you the games you’ve been itching for.

Stop by and visit us at Origins and GenCon to see the new lineup of coming CthulhuTech books, play a game of Poo, or just chat a bit about monsters, mayhem, and the future.

WildFire LLC and Sandstorm Productions LLC. The Storm is building.

*****

WildFire LLC is the creative mastermind behind the ENnie Award-winning and Origins Award nominated CthulhuTech roleplaying line, as well as the Origins Award nominated Poo: the Card Game. They will also be releasing the Chthonian Stars roleplaying line for the Traveller roleplaying game later this year, a Lovecraftian sci-fi exploration set in the near future. The creative partners at WildFire have nearly a half century of industry experience behind them designing roleplaying, miniatures, and casual games. Their planned release schedule over the coming years contains several exciting new product lines that are sure to set the market on fire!

Sandstorm Productions LLC is a Kansas based capitalization and production company dedicated to partnering with premium studios to bring the best games to market. In addition to WildFire, their partner studios include Closet Nerd Games and Posthuman Studios. Sandstorm assists with the capitalization and production of a wide range of gaming products, from classic RPGs to family and educational board games.

Catalyst Game Labs / IMR Productions LLC:

The following was just posted to CGL's website, and I was asked to disseminate it far and wide:

>>>>>
Catalyst Game Labs recently completed a detailed financial review of the company. We learned that over the past several years the company has achieved dramatic growth in terms of demand, increased total revenues and strong sales with an increasing market share in the gaming industry, despite a lackluster economy. We are thrilled by that news and are eager to move forward with our upcoming original game Leviathans, along with our other new casual games. We also remain committed to plans for our beloved licensed games: Shadowrun, BattleTech, Eclipse Phase, and CthuluTech.

While we wish the review had only uncovered positive news, we also discovered our accounting procedures had not been updated as the company continued to grow. The result was that business funds had been co-mingled with the personal funds of one of the owners. We believe the missing funds were the result of bad habits that began alongside the creation of the company, which was initially a small hobby group. Upon further investigation, in which the owner has willingly participated, the owner in question now owes the company a significant balance and is working to help rectify the situation.

The current group of owners was presented with this information on Monday. Administrative organization for the company is under review, and accounting procedures have been restructured, to correct the situation and provide more stringent oversight. We feel the management team at Catalyst did the responsible thing by seeking this financial review and we will continue to restructure as needed. We are in discussions with our partners and freelancers to remedy any back payments that may also be due as a result of this review.

We are embarrassed that this situation did occur but we hope our eagerness to make these changes, along with our reputation for making great games, will encourage you to stand by us. We understand that for a few employees the news was too stressful and we wish them all the best in their new endeavors. However, the majority of the team remains and will continue to bring great entertainment to you all. We appreciate the support our friends, freelancers, and fans have provided us in the past and look forward to a successful future.
>>>>>>

While I don't imagine this answers all questions people may have, I hope this sheds some light on the situation, particularly Catalyst's determination to continue producing products and to remedy back payments to freelancers. I remain open to questions people may have.

Jason H.

There is a press release up on the CGL website about the issue. It's short, so here it is in its entirety:


Catalyst Game Labs Negotiating To Part Ways With WildFire And Posthuman Studios

Catalyst Game Labs is currently engaged in negotiations to end its agreements with WildFire and Posthuman Studios. Once the terms are finalized, Catalyst will no longer publish CthulhuTech or Poo: The Card Game for WildFire, nor will they co develop and publish Eclipse Phase for Posthuman Studios.

“It’s been fantastic to be involved with growing CthulhuTech alongside WildFire, while also launching Posthuman Studios’ Eclipse Phase,” said Randall Bills, Managing Developer. “We love both of these universes and want to seem them grow and flourish. However, in our current situation we need to re-focus on our core brands of BattleTech and Shadowrun, while developing our original games. As such, while we are parting ways with both companies, we’ll be doing everything we can to support WildFire and Posthuman Studios as they assume the full mantle for their game lines.”

Future details surrounding CthulhuTech will be found at www.cthulhutech.com, while future Eclipse Phase details will be found at www.eclipsephase.com.

To turn this back on topic a bit... This was just posted to CGL's site.

Catalyst Game Labs Update

While Catalyst has been publically quiet, we’ve been working behind the scenes these last few weeks, reviewing our processes across the board and changing and updating as necessary, while still working on future products.

As announced on March 20th, a select list of Shadowrun books was put on hold as we negotiated with several freelancers concerning those products. We’re pleased to say that within the last three weeks we’ve been able to make 65 payments to dozens of freelancers covering a variety of projects and resolved the hold issues. This process included completely paying off four books already in print while simultaneously auditing past due contracts in order to continue payments on completed projects. We also chose to pay off a book in preparation for sending it to print. We believe that this three-fold approach of resolving the disputed contracts, establishing a payment plan for completed work, and ensuring new product continues down the pipeline is the best recipe for success at this time.

Catalyst has been in negotiations with some additional parties for weeks concerning how to pay down debts, including making partial payments, turning over stock and so on, as they’ve requested. We’ve been notified that some of these parties are pursuing additional legal means to secure the monies owed despite the negotiations. Our legal counsel has advised that the lawsuit is baseless. As such, Catalyst will defend against it and expect it to be dismissed in the near future. Regardless, we’re continuing our negotiations and will continue to move, as we’ve been doing, to pay debts down as quickly as possible.

Finally, as some of you may have noticed, we’ve just changed the legal text and logos on all our appropriate sites that reference Shadowrun and BattleTech from WizKids to The Topps Company, Inc., per their direction. We’ve been in contact with Topps for weeks regarding these situations. We are currently in negotiations to re-secure the Shadowrun and BattleTech licenses.

Post Human Studios:

Eclipse Phase Leaving Catalyst
As noted earlier today on the Catalyst site, we are in negotiations to sever the licensing agreement between Catalyst Game Labs and Posthuman Studios. Here's what Catalyst had to say:

Catalyst Game Labs Negotiating To Part Ways With WildFire And Posthuman Studios

Catalyst Game Labs is currently engaged in negotiations to end its agreements with WildFire and Posthuman Studios. Once the terms are finalized, Catalyst will no longer publish CthulhuTech or Poo: The Card Game for WildFire, nor will they co develop and publish Eclipse Phase for Posthuman Studios.

“It’s been fantastic to be involved with growing CthulhuTech alongside WildFire, while also launching Posthuman Studios’ Eclipse Phase,” said Randall Bills, Managing Developer. “We love both of these universes and want to seem them grow and flourish. However, in our current situation we need to re-focus on our core brands of BattleTech and Shadowrun, while developing our original games. As such, while we are parting ways with both companies, we’ll be doing everything we can to support WildFire and Posthuman Studios as they assume the full mantle for their game lines.”

Future details surrounding CthulhuTech will be found at cthulhutech.com, while future Eclipse Phase details will be found at eclipsephase.com.

What this means is that in the very near future the Eclipse Phase IP will be back fully in the control of Posthuman Studios. We are already talking to several potential publishing partners, and our goal is to get both the Eclipse Phase Core Rulebook reprint and the EP Gamemaster Pack into distribution as soon as possible, followed soon after by Sunward.

Unfortunately we won't have any solid information on release dates until this matter is completely resolved. We'll be sure to post that information here once we know. Thanks to all of our fans for their patience and continued support!

Wildfire LLC:

The Next Phase of WildFire, Pt. I
April 5, 2010

5-April-10

As of 3:21 pm today, Catalyst Game Labs transferred ownership of all remaining CthulhuTech and Poo inventory to WildFire, the legal copyright holder of both properties.

As of January 3rd, 2010, WildFire terminated any and all business relations with Catalyst Game Labs, due primarily to non-payment of royalties, in addition to other contractual breaches.

Since that time, WildFire has been trying to work with Catalyst for that company to pay WildFire the remaining royalties owed. Things have progressed very slowly. In order to relieve a portion of that debt all at once, the best solution for Catalyst Game Labs was to transfer ownership of WildFire inventory to that company.

More changes are expected within the week, and more information will be released as they happen.

Posted by Matthew Grau at 15:58

[JM Hardy]

I've mentioned a few times that there should be good news shortly about the books that had been frozen from being sold, and that good news is here--all of the books that had been pulled from sale are once again on sale. That means you can once again buy Running Wild, Seattle 2072, Dusk: Dawn of the Artifacts 1, Vice, and Midnight: Dawn of the Artifacts 2. For links to places where you can buy the books, check out the Shadowrun blog. Thanks everyone for your patience as we worked through some issues, and I hope you have fun with these books!

Jason H.

[hobgoblin]

halleluja (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

glad to see this resolved. Now get that sixth world almanac ready!

[Default]

At a local game store, they have Vice, Seattle 2072 and SR4LE on their shelves.

[hobgoblin]

first two where maybe copies sitting in the back room, waiting for the all clear so that they could be put back out on the shelves. The last recently landed, iirc.

[Kerenshara]

Hopefully that means my pre-order of SR4A-LE should show up sometime soon.

Congrats to the (remaining) people at CGL on getting things unsnarled in what has GOT to be record time if even half the wilder rumors have ANY basis in fact whatsoever.

Like they said: Let's see that Almanac!

[otakusensei]

Good to hear this is over. It marks the end of some fantastic work for the Shadowrun line.

[JM Hardy]

I know I've been hitting the forums fairly hard with news lately, but it's nice to have news about products coming out. The latest announcement is that we have a reprint of Runner's Companion coming out, and it's scheduled to street on May 24th. More info on the product is available at our Runner's Companion page.

Jason H.

[hobgoblin]

sure hope this will bring the price back down to sane levels.

[Jhaiisiin]

Given you'll be able to buy it yourself again at standard shelf price, I'd certainly say so. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Karoline]

Wonder if it'll include an errata... [/non subtle hint]

[Falconer]

I second that, though it probably got sent off to the printers ages ago.
It'll be interesting, since the german printing had a number of fixes in it when it shipped a while ago.

All the core books still need their SR4a errata updates.

[hobgoblin]

german printings sometimes have "corrections" that will probably never make its way to back to the english version, iirc.

[The Dragon Girl]

is this going to be the same book or was anything rewritten..?

[Shinobi Killfist]

Yeah I'd pay for the 4A of companion and street magic, but a fluff reprint with old errata not so much.

[Adam]

Assuming this is the same version I sent to press some months ago, there are some corrections to rectify some SR4A issues, but I would classify them as "minor." Maybe 3-4 pages in the entire book changed.

[Udoshi]

You know, I'd chip in for the errata-wishing, but, really, AH put it pretty well a while ago.

I haven't been happy with CGL the last several months. I don't approve of a lot of what Jason is doing or trying to do, for a number of reasons - I think in many instances he was working on pushing the books out the door fast with no regard to their quality, because he was always highly resistant to making relatively simple changes on books that, up to the time I left, were still waiting in various stages of editing and layout. Hell, it took seven months just to squeeze a FAQ out, and I have no faith that you'll ever see an errata out with Jason as line developer. I won't go into some of the upcoming plotlines, not because I'm covered under an NDA but because I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but I had some really serious disagreements with Jason (and others) regarding the development of several upcoming books. Disagreements which I believe stem in large part from Jason's lack of understanding of the game, because to the best of my knowledge he hadn't been involved with SR4 at all until he was brought on as line developer.

This is actually one of my biggest gripes with the game. Cool system, great universe, loads of fun - and I see the same exact same discussions on poorly worded rules week after week on this board, books that have been out over a year not getting their typo-files. Heck, that was one of the reasons I didn't pick up street magic when I had the chance - because while the note in the index said it was a second printing, it wasn't Corrected, like arsenal and unwired. I just didn't want to deal with Errata junk learning the magic book, especialy after discovering half our group was using 4th, the other half 4thA, and discovering stuff was different. That was fun.

Yeah. Some damn errata'd be nice. And since I know CGL folks read these boards, I hope they get the hint, and do something about it.

... and by something, I don't mean work on par with the new FAQs.

Sorry if this seems a bit harsh, but its the way I feel, especially when I put money down for a quality product.

[Ancient History]

To be somewhat fair about that comment, apparently Jason did a fair bit of editing in SR4, which I was not aware of at the time (and honestly, it's really hard to look at any given chunk of text and say "Yup, Jason edited that." since to the best of my knowledge he doesn't shoe-horn those things in). He also did some short fiction in SR4A...well, I'll just leave that out there.

[Udoshi]

To be somewhat fair about that comment, apparently Jason did a fair bit of editing in SR4, which I was not aware of at the time (and honestly, it's really hard to look at any given chunk of text and say "Yup, Jason edited that." since to the best of my knowledge he doesn't shoe-horn those things in). He also did some short fiction in SR4A...well, I'll just leave that out there.

I'll be straight up with you, and freely admit that using an out of context quote like that is kind of below the belt and more than a little unfair to all parties involved - but I think it gets the point across. Sorry if I've offended, and I don't mean to stir shit up, but I did want to express my discontent with the errata - and I think your words are better than mine.

[LurkerOutThere]

Perhaps my standards have been set permanently low but it could be worse, you could have AEG and "errratta? we don't do that, but we'll see the Revised Edition which introduces 1 problem for every two it fixes and doesn't fix some of the worst offenders.'

[Glyph]

Assuming this is the same version I sent to press some months ago, there are some corrections to rectify some SR4A issues, but I would classify them as "minor." Maybe 3-4 pages in the entire book changed.

If it just presents an official SR4A-updated version of karmagen, and fixes the horrible wording on buying Attributes for a free spirit, I'll be happy.

[Grexul]

So if I ordered Runner's Companion from Battleshop on 4/5/2010 would I get the original or a reprint?
Checking My Account at Battleshop it still reads processing.

Grexul

[Cardul]

So if I ordered Runner's Companion from Battleshop on 4/5/2010 would I get the original or a reprint?
Checking My Account at Battleshop it still reads processing.

Grexul

You will likely get the corrected reprint, since, you know, they sold out of the original run
of the Runner's Companion. Street date is MAY 24th..meaning, you will likely see it after that.

[Grexul]

You will likely get the corrected reprint, since, you know, they sold out of the original run
of the Runner's Companion. Street date is MAY 24th..meaning, you will likely see it after that.

I'm shocked! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) Shocked and amazed that someone would sell something they had sold out of! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif)
I guess I would rather have the corrected reprint f I had the choice. Street date of the 24th will be the rough part, long wait after waiting this long, I'm working from a .pdf at the moment. Unfortunately my desktop doesn't travel well and I really prefer the feel of a real book. My sister is getting me a Nook e-reader for my b'day, so I'll see how that works out. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Grexul

[Grexul]

Got the e-mail today!

Date Ordered: Monday 05 April, 2010

The comments for your order are:


Your order has been updated to the following status.

New status: Shipped

Please reply to this email if you have any questions.

I am happy. <<squirrel!>>

Grexul