Gamecock acquision goes south - vendors accuse SouthPeak of not paying up
In the article, Mike Wilson, industry veteran and former Gamecock CEO, goes on record for the first time about the acquisition, and provides some insight into the experience on the Gamecock corporate end. One of the most telling excerpts from the interview is below:
"The management partners at Gamecock were clearly not going to benefit from this sale at all, except in some hope that SouthPeak would leave our Austin operation in place, which is what they said they wanted to do. So, their idea for Harry and I to be able to make some money from the deal and feel good about moving forward, was to work to 'reduce the liabilities', and we were offered a commission basically on any moneys we could talk our partners out of taking. We have no experience in such things, but I'd imagine this is a pretty typical practice in public companies, so initially we said that we would of course talk to our vendor partners and see what could be done. Again, we were trying to play 'good company men' and hope for the best.
But it became apparent very quickly that what they actually meant by that was that they were going to try to pay as little as possible ... meaning telling everyone basically to 'screw off, sue us' if they wouldn't accept half or less of what they were rightfully owed. Harry and I clearly were not interested in this, and it became clear that us working with SP wasn't going to work out, and that they truly had no intention of keeping the Austin team in place."
This bit from an anonymous Gamecock contractor quoted in the article seems particularly relevant too:
"We work in a small industry and I've never seen such ruthless cutthroat behavior from a company -- it's just bad business."SouthPeak Games declined to answer any questions for the article.
