And yeah, the CEO is still missing
Keeping track of what’s going on at Japanese developer Imageepoch has been one hell of a ride. Imageepoch was well known for games such as Luminous Arc, 7th Dragon, and Arc Rise Fantasia. Last month the CEO, Ryoei Mikage, just vanished.
He didn’t quit, he didn’t make any public statement; he’s just gone and no one knows where he is. Last week, his Twitter account was mysteriously deleted. Now it looks like it’s the end of his company, as Imageepoch is filing for bankruptcy.
There appears to be no mention of Ryoei Mikage in the filing. It seems as if there was a huge slump in their profits due to the cost of game development and low sales, rather than something fairly big like the CEO going missing, which you’d think would probably be a bit of a problem.
Thanks to handy-dandy google translate, the website says:
“”Tokyo” (Ltd.) Imageepoch (capital 100 million 4.214 million yen, Bunkyo-ku, Otsuka 5-7-12, representative Mikage Yoshie said) and, of affiliated companies (Ltd.) Smile online game (capital ¥ 4,100,000, Minato Shirokanedai 2-4-16, two companies of the same representative) received bankruptcy proceedings determined by the Tokyo District Court on May 7.
Bankruptcy trustee Nakano Tsuyoshi lawyer (Minato-ku, Toranomon 1-14-1, Toranomon law firm, phone 03-3508-9811). Up period for filing proofs of claims is June 4, the meeting for reporting the status of property date 10:00 July 30.
(Ltd.) image epoch, 2004 founding, 2005 (2005) game developers, which is corporate reorganization in June. In also obtained funding from other companies in the same industry, to expand the business by taking advantage of the industry experience of the representative. Worked on the development of such “~ time and eternity – Tokitowa” “Seventh Dragon”, “Black ★ Rock Shooter THE GAME”, nine months of the year revenue high, 2011 has been recorded about 1.7 billion 51 million yen.
However, after the financial burden associated with the game development has been a burden, sales plan also cannot be ensured, nine months of the year revenue high, 2013 is reduced to about 400 million 10 million yen. After that business conditions will not recover, until November 2014 it had to stop a substantial activity.
Ltd. Smile online game, but the establishment of June 2013, I was stuck in the form of linked to (stock) image epoch.
Liabilities (stock) image epoch is about 1.1 billion yen for about 43 people creditor, Ltd. Smile online game is about 3 million yen for about five creditors, about 1.1 billion three million yen in two companies total.”
And so that is the end of Imageepoch. Mikage went missing at a time when people were questioning the future of the company, and so this is just confirmation of their unfortunate financial situation. Hopefully all those affected by this can find new jobs, and we hope Mikage is found safe.
