The Hammer Comes Down On West End Games

Boy, that’s two chronic deadbeat game companies going down in one week.  West End Games, which has been under painful mismanagement by a guy named Eric Gibson for a loooong time now, is finally coming apart and he’s selling off the properties – Septimus goes back to the originator, d6 goes fully open, and Torg is being sold and then he plans to close the doors.

The one good thing he’s doing is making d6 open and community-owned.  This guy isn’t a criminal embezzler like the Catalyst Games guys, but he’s a sad sack mis-manager who’s been squeezing WEG through one trauma after another – took pre-orders for Septimus then cancelled it and couldn’t repay customers, freaked out on forums, generally always had a long list of whiny “too much information” personal life excuses about everything going wrong…  In over his head, which wasn’t his fault, but refusing to make the situation better by getting out, which was.  He finally paid everyone off after a long time but hasn’t really done much since.  So he’s not as bad as these other guys, but he’s on the “never do business with” list the RPG industry has generated, along with the Catalyst guys and many others.

This may or may not be the last word, though – he gave up and announced WEG was done before, but then reneged (see the WEG wikipedia entry for more).  But, westendgames.com is down and has been for months now and he’s been MIA for as long.  So whether he really sells bits or not – it’s dead.

So who will complete the trifecta?  I’m hoping Outlaw Games.  That guy’s (James Shipman) an  honest-to-God criminal.