Serious news story about the closure of my workplace, Interzone Games

At first I was quite hesitant to talk about this online, but given the amount of media coverage that’s now out there, it seems like a good time.

My workplace, Interzone Games, in Perth, Australia, is about to be liquidated by the ATO due to unpaid tax debts. Interzone Games is a game development studio, working on an MMO that was scheduled for release later this year.

Money for these taxes was meant to be sent by the parent company, Interzone Entertainment, based in the USA. Namely, the CEO, Marty Brickey, and directors (though now resigned), Greg Chadwell and Mike Turner.

The parent company has also failed to send money to pay employees salaries. They’ve been constantly late with payments, and as we currently stand, we have not been paid for the last one and a half months work. They have also failed to pay our superannuation, in my case, for about two of the two and a half years I’ve worked there.

The last year I have spent there, we’ve had multiple occasions where our pay was extremely late (almost two months at one point) and naturally during these times the US company had nothing but a huge stream of promises of incoming money, of which next to none of these promises were kept. They were never up front with us about the condition of the company, and were trading in an insolvent state, ie. illegally, for over a year. There has also been no resident director for the Perth company since 2008; also illegal by Australian law.

There were also two other branches of the company, one in Brazil and one in China. Very similar things happened to both; they weren’t paid and were liquidated, while the directors from the US company got away with it. As far as I understand it, if the directors of a company are out of the country, there’s very little you can do to them. Ex-employees from both companies have been in serious trouble financially as a result.

You’re probably wondering, why the hell I stuck around, with a company with a CEO and directors as dodgy as that. First of all, the people I worked with in the Perth studio were some of the most amazing, talented and friendly people I’ve ever met. I’ve learnt a lot from them, and I would still love to work with them in the future. I don’t regret staying with the company, even through all the shit that we went through.

We always very active, striking when not paid for extended periods, seeking all the legal and government advice and action we could. However, pretty much all the avenues we have pursued turned to be either hopelessly slow at acting or unable to help us. The ASIC in particular, the one organization that could have detained the directors from the parent company when they were in Australia, turned out to be completely useless, as any investigation they made had a turnaround of almost a month, by which time the directors could have run back to the US.

I feel absolutely no obligation to the parent company, who screwed us over in any way they possibly could. But for the people I worked with and the game we were working so hard to complete, you know, I really wanted things to at least hold together until we’d shipped the game.

But you know what? I haven’t even GOTTEN to the story that’s unfolded this week, so I’ll share what I can with you, here.

This week, with the ATO’s closure of the company imminent, Mike Turner arrived in Perth to copy the game (ie. the intellectual property) and leave with it before all the building’s assets were seized. There’s a lot of controversy surrounding this, naturally.

To start with, Turner turned up at the office, with no paperwork, expecting us to HELP him download the IP from the servers. We said as we hadn’t paid, we wouldn’t co-operate.

He then came back after dark, when we’d all gone home and changed all the locks, telling us we were all suspended and that we were trespassing (both of these are false. You can’t be suspended when there is outstanding pay, and we were on public property). With the help of a contracted Bigworld Technology server engineer, over the next two days they downloaded an unknown quantity of data from the servers, quite possibly including property that was not their own.

As an employee, I’m horrified at the idea of the parent company swooping in and flying off with all our hard work that they haven’t paid for, and dodging all responsibility for the massive debt they’re leaving behind.

Supposedly, their plan is to get another studio in the USA to finish the game, which is a ridiculous idea. Anyone who knows anything about developing games would know how much longer it would take to release the game if you’re starting with a new development team who don’t know the game engine or the code. Oh, and they’ll ‘pay out everything we’re entitled to’ once the game ships and makes money (Hahahaha. Seriously, a promise from Marty? Like all those other promises? Even if the game shipped and made money, the chances we’d see a cent of it are pretty much nil).

Also, this means that they DID have the money to pay our debts, but decided it would be cheaper not to.

That’s the situation we’ve all found ourselves in. It’s all over the news, if you’d like to read more, there are a number of videos and articles:


www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IsIKD… (yes, I’m on television)

kranzky.rockethands.com/2010/0… (breakdown of info on the companie/people involved, news articles etc)

www.wabusinessnews.com.au/en-s…

www.kotaku.com.au/2010/02/wa-d…

au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/busi…


What you can do to help:

Just looking at the above links will help. I would love these news articles to be the first thing you see when you Google ‘Marty Brickey’. People need to know not to trust them. He’s the sort of character who’s all charisma and promises, but his word is worthless.

Don’t invest with them, don’t work for them, and if you can, spread the word about who they are and what they’ve done.

I’m not in dire need of any financial support for the time being, so please don’t worry. I should be able to apply for GEERS, a government organization, which pays any outstanding payroll in Australia in the event of a company being liquidated. That'll most likely take a year or more though.

I will lose the superannuation, and yes, it sucks, but that at least I’m pretty well resigned to.

However, if you would like to support the rest of the team several members of Interzone work on game projects in their spare time. I’ll later post another article with more detail showcasing some of the iPhone games, because one, it’ll help them financially in a small way, and 2, THEY’RE AWESOME!

Rocket Hands
Sandbox Software

I have decided to wait until all the drama has calmed down before looking at my options for further work.