Strategy First Files For Bankruptcy

Although there has been no official announcement from the company, Canadian legal documents indicate that PC developer and publisher Strategy First filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on August 18th. According to financial statements first released in May, the company was at that time over $5 million in debt, and needed to urgently reorganize its finances and operations with its creditors. Noted for strategy titles such as Jagged Alliance, Europa Universalis II, and Sudden Strike, the company was founded in 1988 in Canada, and at its peak employed over one hundred personnel in three different offices - this is currently reduced to just sixteen in Montreal. The company’s debts as of the legal filing include unpaid rent and wages, as well as almost $4 million owed to investors and $1.7 million owed to various different game developers. However, recent attempts to reduce the breadth of the company’s operations have apparently resulted in the creation of a positive cash flow, which increases the chances that the company will be able to survive through this current crisis and use the Chapter 11 protection to restructure and reorganize. Strategy First president Don McFatridge has recently made statements to the press indicating the company has found a new distributor, and is intending to start releasing new games in the next few weeks. However, multiple developers are indicating royalties as high as six figures are still owed to them by the company, so the situation is still somewhat unclear.