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JoWooD - Now Swedish ... sort of!

by Gorath, 2011-06-06 22:36:27

The whole German internet, for example WoG, and, reports that JoWood's ashes have been purchased by Wingefors Invest from Sweden. The transaction is being run through Wingefors daughter Game Outlet.

Here's a summary / translation of the few known details:

  • Game Outlet takes over the "preponderate part" or "significant parts" of JoWooD Austria's assets.
  • Game Outlet takes over 95% of Romanian QA company Quantic Labs.
  • Wingefors plans to continue operation at JoWooD in a scaled down way ...
  • but there will be no employment guarantee for the remaining employees.
  • The old share holders get nothing.
  • The rate for the creditors is still unclear due to an ongoing legal issue.

Game Outlet is a distributor specialized in budget games and overstock. The business numbers available are ca. 25M EUR revenue and 6M+ games sold (source: DiePresse) in 2010, and 311M SEK (ca. 34.5M EUR) and 4M games according to the Wingefors homepage.


This doesn't look good at all for the remaining JoWooD employees outside of Romania. Game Outlet's business is moving boxes, not publishing games. Plus they're buying assets, not the company. It smells like JoWooD or the potentially new company will be closed down when the dust has settled. Good luck to the people at JoWooD.
From Game Outlet's perspective the deal makes a lot of sense. JoWooD certainly had a lot of returns and finished goods, and selling this is Game Outlet's core business. The back catalog, and especially ArcaniA, means cheap supplies for their sales channel. So far it hasn't been confirmed if ArcaniA is part of the deal, though.
It's still unclear if or when Arcania: Fall of Setarrif will be released. A lot of parties are involved: at least JoWooD, BVT, Spellbound and Piranha Bytes. Nobody knows who has - or has not - which rights, who is entitled to what amount of royalties from whom. It can take years to sort this out.

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