Acclaim Shuts Down Games After Playdom Transition

Acclaim, the shuttered classic game maker reborn in 2005 as an online game company, shut down the vast majority of its online games Thursday, according to the company's website. All Acclaim's client-based online games switched off on August 26. The company is offering reimbursement of Acclaim's virtual currency Acclaim Coins, and specifically for players of the game 9Dragons, refunds on purchases made in the last 30 days. However, the company's Flash-based MMO Kogamu, which was in development prior to the company's acquisition, continues to live on on Facebook under the Playdom name, and music game RockFREE also continues. The shift at Acclaim comes after social gaming company Playdom acquired Acclaim in May this year. Only about two months after that buy, Disney bought Playdom in a $763 million deal, including $200 million in target-based earnouts. Playdom's CFO was unavailable for comment, while a PR rep for Disney Interactive Studios did not have a comment immediately available. Aside from 9Dragons, Acclaim also ran the online games Spellborn, 2Moons and Bots, among others. Acclaim was founded in 1987, and published some of the most popular titles in gaming, including the first and second Burnout games, Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II and NBA Jam. But a long string of subpar games led the publisher to be associated with low-quality product, and sales showed it. The company closed its doors in 2004. The following year, former Activision executive Howard Marks bought the name for a reported $100,000, and relaunched the brand as a publisher of translated Asian MMOs in the West. Industry veteran David Perry partnered with Marks and was chief creative officer for Acclaim, before he moved on to co-found the cloud-based gaming company Gaikai.