Mar 6
Ziff Davis Media files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
Yesterday, Ziff Davis Media, owner of the 1UP Network which includes 1UP.com and EGM, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York. This essentially means that they owed a lot of money to a lot of people, and the bondholders of that debt agreed to turn it into equity (note to self: call up H&R Block representative and find out what all this means). However, the bondholders couldn’t agree on how much of the company they each received, so ZD has requested that the courts decide.
Simon Cox, VP of Content for the entire network, had this to say on his blog post:
The process will take about three to four months, and at the end of it we will effectively have new owners. In the meantime, our day-to-day operations are completely unaffected. In fact, the major bondholders have kicked in a bunch of cash to make, if anything, our day-to-day operations run smoother than they have in years.
The reason why this is going to be positive thing for us is that once we re-emerge from the other side of this, fully intact (as we assuredly will be), we will have reduced that debt significantly, and the payments that go with it. Our earnings will once again be our own, and we will have spare cash to invest in building bigger, better, faster, stronger and better-looking websites and magazines.
Does this signal a rebirth of the 1UP Network? Possibly. Some may see this as a bit of damage control, others may see it as a sincere confession. Either way, it’s nice to see them coming clean. On a personal note, I find 1UP and its magazines to be the most competent of the ‘big 3′ gaming sites when it comes to media content such as podcasts and the like. I’ll be resting easy knowing that none of that is going to change.
That Chapter 11 Thing… - Simon Cox’s 1UP Blog
Categories: Pwned3 Comments so far
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Awesome use of the “Pwned” category.
It’s good to see that even mildly sad news can make me smirk a little due to good use of the blog image.
And then a blog which will go unnamed copied the idea. Oh well…