An asset liquidation group revealed today that the component parts of middleware maker Emergent Technologies are up for sale to the highest bidder, just days after a deal between the company and struggling Krome Studios fell through.
A sale of assets notice posted today by Gerbsman Partners is offering up Emergent's assets, including control of the Gamebryo Lightspeed engine, to the highest bidder.
After securing over $40 million in equity financing from various venture capital firms, the document shows that Emergent has shown operating losses of over $30 million from its founding in 2005 through 2009, though the company was apparently showing a small profit so far this year.
The document claims the Gamebryo Engine has been used in over 350 games so far, with over 100 further projects currently in development from 40 current clients.
The current and historical client list for Emergent-powered games include companies such as Electronic Arts, Activision, THQ, Ubisoft, Sony, Bethesda, 2K, Atari, Disney, Tencent, Shanda, TheNine, NineYou, NC Soft, Kingsisle, EA Mythic, and Trion.
Earlier this week Emergent announced a planned deal to integrate their operations with struggling developer Krome Studios had come to an "unexpected halt."
Late last year, the company announced a round of restructuring layoffs "to more deeply align with the constantly evolving needs of its customer base," as the company put it at the time, but it has continued to sign new partners in recent months.
There is no current indication whether or not the asset sale will affect Emergent as a going concern. The party selling the Emergent's assets, Venture Lending & Leasing V, Inc., also provided $4 million in venture debt financing to the firm.
Gamasutra has reached out to Emergent directly for comment and will update this story with any new information.
Seemed most developers i've talked with that use(d) Gamebryo always complained about it. Not saying those of Unreal or Unity don't. But its on a much different scale.
I think the recession does have something to do with it. Unity3D is a relatively new player with an entirely different type of customer and business model - I am not disparaging them, just that its too different to compare. Game engines have varying lifespans depending on their respective markets. I shipped a game engine called Franklin 3D (http://www.franklin3d.com) for LiveCode, a Hypercard like cross platform dev tool, and its going very well - but its also serving a niche market.
