Following the news that Starbreeze Studios was restructuring after the financial failure that was Overkill’s The Walking Dead, and that former executive Bo Andersson had been fired, it’s now being reported that police have raided the Starbreeze offices in Stockholm, Sweden, and have made an unconfirmed number of arrests of personnel.
Expressen is reporting that in mid-November the top executives began selling their stock in Starbreeze, the makers of Payday 2, ahead of the restructure and raiding. When the authorities caught wind of the news following the public announcement that they would be firing key executives and restructuring their operations on December 4th, 2018, police raided the offices.
But it didn’t end with police raids and arrests, the ECO and EBM, part of the Swedish Economic Crime Authority, announced that they would be formally investigating Starbreeze for suspicions of gross misconduct regarding insider trading.
What’s interesting is that former CEO Bo Andersson is working with the authorities on heading up the investigation along with chief prosecutor Thomas Langrot.
Both have been terribly secretive about how much criminality Starbreeze may be associated with, or how many individuals have been arrested. Both continued to say that there’s a lot of confidentiality surrounding the case. In the interview with the media outlet, Andersson repeatedly mentioned that he could not comment on the details of the investigation, and that he had been ordered not to comment on anything, even though he’s helping with the investigation.
This comes after the abysmal launch of Overkill’s The Walking Dead, which was basically dead on arrival on the market. The game low-key promoted the SJW agenda, with a “diverse” cast of characters. None of this appealed to core gamers and quite so, gamers ignored and avoided purchasing the game, which further proves that attempting to promote or court a phantom audience on the promise of “diversity” will not help your game sell.
Ironically enough, this whole story almost reads like a mission out of Payday 2.
(Main image courtesy of JohnSheppard44)
(Thanks for the news tip Rala Cloft and anons)
