After some turbulent times in the past two years, UK game spublisher Mastertronic has announced today that it has entered administration.
The firm has confirmed that a deal is in place to buy the assets of the business, and the existing team is going to be retained with one exception. MD Andy Payne is going to be leaving with the buy out.
Mastertronic applied for a CVA in July of 2014 to avoid a winding-up order, closing its retail business and laying off up to 40 percent of its staff at the time. A new investment deal in February of this year meant that it survived, but issues with the deal forced Mastertronic to seek new funding, which didn't happen.
"We signed an investment deal with a Bahrain/Qatar based organisation back in February 2015 which would have seen our majority Dutch shareholder exit and be replaced by these new shareholding investors and the company financed going forward," Payne said in an interview about the news. "Sadly, this organisation did not honour the contract and as a direct result have put us in the position we find ourselves in today. We made strategic investments into game development, based on this investment deal. When the Middle Eastern investors reneged on the deal, it left us desperately needing an alternative investor. Sadly we failed to find one in time."
The Mastertronics brand has been around in the games market for 32 years, although in the last few years its name has waned as other publishers took the limelight.