Shadenfreude, thy name is Siembieda!

Palladium books in danger of closing its doors.

"betrayal of trust, theft, and embezzlement has inflicted what we estimate to be $850,000 to 1.3 million dollars in damages to Palladium."

Where the hell did Palladium get $1.3 mil to be damaged?? Does anybody still buy their crap? (Besides Harrington of course ...)

"The truly wonderful Rifts® videogame – Rifts® Promise of Power – was stillborn. The N-Gage platform never took off in North America. That meant the N-Gage and Rifts® Promise of Power would NOT be available on the mass market in the USA and Canada. Finding it anywhere in North America required an act of God. "

Yeah, because nobody could have predicted the N-Gage dying early ...

"The Rifts movie? Stalled. Until Jerry Bruckheimer has a script he loves, the movie can’t get the green light. "

How hard is it to get Bruckheimer to "love" a script?? Just put an explosion on every other page, and you're done!

"There were discussions with a company interested in doing a Rifts® MMOG but it didn’t pan out."

Yeah, the design doc was a nightmare. I mean, the Glitter Boy and Juicer classes started at level 48, while everyone else started as level 2 .... I can't imagine why it was a tough sell.

"Going public with this appeal may very well cost us getting the Robotech® license renewal."

Boo-hoo.

I mean, I do feel for the guy. I know he's put a ton of time and energy into keeping that company running, and the game industry's unstable enough as it is, but man, qwitcherbellyachin'! You could cut that press release by half and probably get more sales out of it. As it is, I'm going to go buy something from another company that I actually think deserves to survive.

Forgive the high snark factor, it's been a rough day.