catalyst_logo_262w.gifThere’s a lot of rumor and speculation floating on the interwebs tonight that Catalyst Game Labs, makers of the Shadowrun, Battletech and Cthulhutech game lines, is in quite a bit of trouble. We’re not going to speculate on what is actually going on, but here’s what we’ve been able to put together from various freelancers and others associated with Catalyst:

  • Adam Jury (confirmed on his blog and Twitter) and Jennifer Harding (confirmed on Dumpshock) have left Catalyst
  • Jennifer has stated publicly: “However, I will state that on Monday, March 15th, I resigned from working as CGL’s bookkeeper and office manager, due to a conflict involving my personal ethics. The Operations Manager resigned the week before that, for similar personal reasons.” (we assume that the operations manager referenced is David Stansel-Garner, though this is unconfirmed)
  • Some freelancers have indicated that payments are running behind, though others have current accounts (this could be nothing – inconsistency in the timeliness of payments is not uncommon for small businesses that rely on freelancers)
  • Conversation on the ClassicBattletech forum seems to be non-existent (some threads on the topic have been removed), but a few of the Catalyst folks are talking on the Dumpshock forums
  • As a reminder, ShadowRun and Battletech are both actually owned by Topps, Cthulhutech is owned by Wildfire and Eclipse Phase is owned by Posthuman Studios
  • Jason Hardy (line developer for Shadowrun) has indicated that a release from management should be forthcoming shortly and has asked people to avoid speculation

To be clear, there was a fair bit of debate on our internal discussion list as to whether we should even post this item. That said, there’s so much speculation going on and we’re such big fans of the work the company has done (I mean, seriously, have you seen the Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition? It’s gorgeous!) that we wanted to be up front and only print what we’ve got from first hand, reliable sources and hopefully bring a bit of calm to the situation (we have also sent a request for comment directly to Catalyst). I for one am hopeful that things are being blown out of proportion and that Catalyst will continue putting out more of the high quality products we’ve seen over the last few years.

Update: Franklin in the comments was the first to post a link to the official CLG response.