Earlier this year French game developer/publisher BulkyPix filed for bankruptcy and, after unsuccessfully seeking a buyer, wound up entering liquidation back in August — reportedly stiffing devs in the process.
Devs who are curious about what’s going on with BulkyPix (or who may have outstanding BulkyPix contracts themselves) should know that at least one studio, Tiny Lab Productions, was able to get the rights to its game Orborun back from BulkyPix by contacting the bankrupt publisher directly — but the developer is still waiting on outstanding payments.
“It was hard to reach them as I believe [things] can be rough for them these days – but everything is solved now,” Tiny Lab CEO Jonas Abromaitis told Gamasutra via email. “We signed the contract with them back in 2013, they got exclusive rights for Google Play and App Store, we thought that now it is out of our hands, but this happened…according to our contract we get our rights back in such case, so we reached our contacts from Bulkypix and they were kind enough to transfer the game to our accounts by themselves.”
However, Abromaitis reports that BulkyPix still owes Tiny Lab some money, and he says that despite the studio’s formal request for payment (via this form, the deadline for which was November 18th — or December 18th if you’re outside of France) out of the BulkyPix liquidation he’s not sure the money will ever arrive.
“They still owe us some money, and their bankruptcy agents are dealing with creditors as far as I understand,” wrote Abromaitis. “These forms that needed to be filled were for the mentioned agents to create the priority list for who the debts should be returned first. it is usual case to wait more than half of year after the liquidation to get your money back and in some cases there might be no leftovers for you…fingers crossed!”
Now Tiny Lab is working out what to do with Orborun without BulkyPix’s involvement. Reflecting on the publisher’s efforts to promote the game on crowded mobile marketplaces, Abromaitis says he didn’t always agree but that BulkyPix’s business strategies regarding Tiny Lab’s games were always “reasonable.”
“They could not afford higher risk and they did what needed to be done to keep them going,” he wrote. “So – despite some delays in payouts for our invoices, sometimes difficulties reaching them out and (as any developer would say about most publishers) lower than expected efforts to promote it – they were a decent premium games publisher and did all obligations from their side for us.”
Gamasutra has reached out to BulkyPix multiple times for details on what’s going on with the company and its liquidation but has yet received no response.