Recently, the hammer dropped on Midway Newcastle and today the layoffs continued at the publisher's corporate headquarters. Roughly 20 percent of the company's total workforce were given their 60-day notice, reports the Chicago Tribune. All 60 employees being laid off work at Midway's Chicago corporate office.
While jobs were offered to over 100 employees at the Chicago studio responsible for Mortal Kombat, all of the company's senior executives, include CEO Matthew Booty, were informed that their jobs would be cut.
An SEC form says that the company would write off $69 million - $76 million in debt, roughly $30 million of which is development costs, $3-5 million are in assets that can't be easily liquidated and $41 million of impaired goodwill (assets which were affected negatively by the Warner Bros. buyout), according to GameSpot. The filing revealed that the gross purchase price was $49 million, more than the original $33 million figure due to items like inventory and accounts receivable.
Midway Seattle is still working on This is Vegas, the status of which is somewhat tenuous, and Midway San Diego (TNA wrestling developers) is still being shopped around. Warner Bros. now owns the notable Midway IPs Mortal Kombat, Spy Hunter, Gauntlet, Joust, and Area 51; whether they were worth nearly $50 million will depend on the decisions that Warner Bros. makes going forward.
