Maelstrom Games declares bankruptcy!

[Paradoxrifts]

OFFICIAL NOTICE

Maelstrom Games Ltd. has ceased trading and will enter liquidation at some point over the next few months.

A creditor of Maelstrom Games Ltd., Wayland Games Ltd., issued a Statutory Demand under section 123(1)(a) or 221(1)(a) of the Insolvency Act, 1986 on the 17th of October, 2012 for ?99,773.61 plus costs of issuing and serving the demand.

This debt was purchased from Simple Miniature Games by Wayland Games Ltd on the 1st of October, 2012 and payment of this debt was demanded in full by Wayland Games after seven days had elapsed. Unfortunately, Maelstrom Games Ltd. could not pay Wayland Games Ltd. this debt in full within those seven days.

Previous to the debt purchase, Maelstrom Games Ltd. was servicing the debt owed to Simple Miniature Games at the rate of ?500 per working day, claimed by the creditor when convenient for him by charging a credit card owned by Maelstrom Games Ltd., which had been occurring since mid-June and continued to late September, the last payment being taken on the 25th. Maelstrom Games Ltd. did not cancel these payments and were not aware that this debt was being transferred.

Maelstrom Games Ltd. offered to pay the debt purchased by Wayland Games Ltd. in the same manner as it had paid Simple Miniature Games, but this was not taken up by Wayland Games Ltd.

Maelstrom Games Ltd. can only apologise to those customers whose orders have not been fulfilled as it is now impossible for Maelstrom Games Ltd. to fulfil them, excepting those for Mierce Miniatures products (fulfilled by Mierce Miniatures in November) and Battlefront Miniatures products (fulfilled by Maelstrom Games in partnership with Battlefront Miniatures and Maunsfeld Gaming in November), all of which will be sent by Maelstrom Games Ltd. Other customer orders for certain ranges may be fulfilled in the future and any customers whose orders can be fulfilled will be contacted by Maelstrom Games in due course.

All creditors will be issued the relevant notices by the assigned Insolvency Practitioner when Maelstrom Games Ltd. enters liquidation.

The response from Wayland Games can be read HERE because I'm not typing that sucker out in full.

I've taken the liberty of lifting further comment from a representative of Simple Miniature Games from a post made on the Wyrd Games forum, but will apparently be available up on their website shortly.

On the 1st October we made the difficult decision to assign the debt owed to Simple Miniature Games to Wayland Games Ltd for a nominal fee.

This debt at the point sold stood at just under

[Masked Thespian]

I'm out around

[knightperson]

Can somebody explain, in relatively Plain English rather than legalese, what the heck happened? I can comprehend that Maelstrom ran out of money, as can happen quite often in the business, but what about the rest? Who is Simple Miniature Games, why did Wayland buy the debt they were owed by Maelstrom, and why did repayment arrangements like the ones that were acceptable to SMG not get worked out for Wayland?

[Masked Thespian]

It's my understanding that Maelstrom have, over a period of time, run up a large amount of debts to its suppliers, including Simple Miniature Games.  Wayland, upon seeing this occur, decided that if Maelstrom continued to do so, it would fold and in all likelihood bring down a number of suppliers too due to the debts owed.  Since our hobby is relatively small and there aren't too many suppliers, this would hit EVERYONE hard; consumers, retailers, and manufacturers.  They attempted to buy out Maelstrom a couple of times but were rebuffed, so eventually bought the debt that Maelstrom owed to Simple Miniature Games and forced Maelstrom to attempt to repay, and in the process forced them to declare bankruptcy.

On the face of it, it appears that Wayland have directly forced one of their competitors out of business, if it weren't for the fact that it appears that Maelstrom's operators knew it would fold for months in advance and have been funnelling assets into other companies, including one called "Eye of the Storm" which has an identical webstore to that of Maelstrom, also operated by the same people.

Basically, Maelstrom have been ripping people off with no intention of fulfilling orders nor paying its debts, and have started a different company to start the process over again.  Wayland have forced this to happen now as opposed to some other point in the future, when more money could have been taken by them.