Care to put down your ice buckets and follow up?
Published:
August 29, 2014 at 10:04am
I have just received this comment:
The Malta Enterprise-backed “global family entertainment brand” TRC Family Entertainment, based in Malta, is dead. A mere three years after it was founded, the plug has been pulled.
Several dozen have been laid off, all the money the government pumped into it is gone. The high profile board of directors will no doubt be laughing all the way to the bank with their severance packets.
And what are the newsrooms doing? Never mind holding anyone to account, the story is not even getting a mention. Instead they’re falling over themselves covering those damn ice bucket challenges.
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A bit of background:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140625/local/ME-invested-4m-in-digital-games-firm.524909
I found the following comments from employees:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/TRC-Family-Entertainment-Reviews-E589960.htm
Not clear how true these comments are.
The comments are 99% spot on
The positive reviews were posted by either executives, HR or Head of HR politely forcing its staff to lie and write 1 or 2 positive reviews (I was one)
“very destructive and painful to have to take directions from someone with no experience in your area of expertise”
Welcome to Malta.
I worked there. What a horrible experience.
Of course the fact that 100 people lost their jobs means nothing to the media is appalling. This company was going to the pits at least some 2 years ago and what happened as inevitable.
I was also at TRC and affected by the mass redundancy.
In addition to this not being reported anywhere is also the fact that they haven’t paid their employees for the past 3 months. Many of the comments on Glassdoor (linked earlier in the comments) are pretty spot on.
I also worked at TRC and can attest to the fact that the employees were not paid for the past 3 months. One of those Glassdoor reviews is mine, and I can say that all of them are 100% true in the negative things they are saying. It’s true that the heads seem to be getting away scotfree
No one at TRC has been paid his or her June, July, August salaries.
People moved country to take up a job with TRC only to find that already, it had no money. The expenses incurred by those who moved to Malta runs into the thousands of euros. Some even sold their house to move here to Malta only to be screwed just two weeks later.
To add to it if you do your research on the internet you can see these people seem to spin up companies up around the globe then close them down.
Not one of them makes any money and they scam investors and governments to secure funding for their insane pay-cheques.
Former employee who lost everything because of the company, left to find our rent money and money for food while rich management had a great life. Left staff to find money to get home while we were made homeless by our landlord and then asked why are you stressed. This company should be held accountable for what they have done.
Didn’t they promise to launch a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) in 2013? What happened to that?
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2011-11-23/news/online-multimedia-company-in-malta-302222
They have only launched one children’s story book app, and a very basic drawing app. How on earth were they going to recoup all the investment?
And how on earth does a start-up company start off with $18 million worth of IP? And if they have $18 Million worth of IP, surely they could sell it off and pay their employees?
I smell a rat. They’ve been pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, taking advantage of all the Maltese and EU support, incentives and funding, to line their own pockets.
Someone should call up Chris Deering – Malta’s “special envoy for gaming” as well as chairman of TRC – and ask him what’s going on. And get Malta Enterprise’s take on it too.
Chris Deering if the joint chairman of the TRC board of directors too. And Lawrence Zammit the chairman of Malta Enterprise, is also on the TRC board of directors. http://www.trcmediagroup.com/about/the-board/
Here you go: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-09-02-report-trc-family-entertainment-staff-unpaid-90-percent-redundancies
I had the unfortunate experience of working at TRC. I can only say that it smells of scam from the bottom up. There was clearly no intention at any point of releasing anything as as soon as the game was “ready” to launch whole teams got fired for no reason and it was back to the drawing board. The company recruited tens of people from all over the world luring them in with false promises. The management had a complete disregard for its employees and their families while claiming to be a “family entertainment” company. Employees were being forced to work unpaid overtime daily and often weekends too. The whole enterprise came across as a psychotic monster.
In 2011 I was contacted by TRC to learn about a really exciting new project with promises of making literally a million dollars in my first year.
But first, I had to work for free for about three months and do 100% of the artwork for an MMO pitchdeck.
I told them to eat shit and I’m happy I did. I feel very sorry for some of my old co-workers who got sucked in to their scam and lost so much.
These people should be in jail.