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In this job, I'm used to seeing old, defunct companies come back from the dead, typically when some unrelated third party comes along and hoovers up a bunch of rights.
But even I don't really know what to make of this recent post from the publisher Empire Interactive on LinkedIn a few days ago, which claims the company has "the trademark and select intellectual property rights of The 3DO Company."
Why, you may ask? Well, that's because, as far as I was aware, Empire Interactive has also been dead as a publisher since 2009, with the company's back catalogue having been sold off more than a decade ago. So, in other words, this isn't the case of just one old publisher coming back from the dead, but two, making me want to do my best Haley Joel Osment impression, as I fearfully type "I see dead companies."
In the case of The 3DO Company, it's been dead since the early 2000s, with the company going bankrupt in 2003 and the rights to many of its games scattered to the four winds since then. Because of that, I've been cautious to reserve judgment on this new announcement. Though there does seem to be some within the industry who have taken this post at face value.
The former CEO of Limited Run Games, Josh Fairhurst, for example, was among those who replied to the initial post on LinkedIn; he offered Empire the chance to license the 3DO versions of Night Trap, Sewer Shark, Corpse Killer, Quarterback Attack, or Supreme Warrior. Meanwhile, the CEO of Antstream Arcade, Steve Cottam, labelled it "Great news," adding, "I have a lot of love for the brand."
This made me want to dig a little deeper into exactly what is happening, rather than ignore it outright, but the more I dug, the more new questions seemed to appear.
From what I've been able to gather, Empire Interactive seems to have been relaunched earlier this month without the original founders, Ian Higgins and Simon Jeffrey, with an individual named Işık Şekercigil (who we've found next to no information on) now characterising himself rather generously on LinkedIn as the "Founder of Empire Interactive and The 3DO Company."
It currently has an active website, but it is extremely light on info and raises a few red flags, claiming, for example, that the publisher received a "2024 Best Agency" accolade, even though it apparently didn't exist at the time.
That's not all, either, as despite stating in the announcement that it acquired the rights to The 3DO Company to "re-establish 3DO as an independent game company and bring some of its legendary titles back to players through carefully crafted remastered editions,” the first title it has announced under The 3DO Company seems to be a pretty blatant Sims clone (as opposed to anything actually 3DO-related), suggesting this could just be a desperate ploy for people's attention.
I've reached out to Empire Interactive to find out more and will update the article if they respond.