Woolworths closure to cost Ubisoft £1.3m

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 12th December 2008

Ubisoft is standing to lose more than £1.3 million after the closure of Woolworths.

The credit crunch is now heavily impacting on game publishers and developers, with French publisher Ubisoft set to lose around EUR 1.5 million due to the collapse of Woolworths and its distribution business EUK, says GI.biz.

Ubisoft's Chief Financial Officer said that payment problems for Woolworths was affecting other partners in other areas of Europe and that Ubisoft was being heavily effected.

"Before the Woolworths incident we had two defaults, one in Germany and one in France, for about EUR 3 million, but since we were covered by about 90 per cent the impact for us should be about EUR 300,000," said Martinez in a conference call.

"Woolworths is going to be bigger, probably it's going to be between EUR 1.2 and 1.5 million," he revealed - that's around £1.3 million. Oddly Martinez had previously said Ubisoft felt secure with Woolworths when they received a payment earlier in the year.

"It was not so funny that when we had the last call I was saying that Woolworths was okay, and then they filed five minutes afterwards," said Martinez, further proving that accountants have no sense of humour.

Ubisoft isn't the only company that will lose money from the collapse of Woolworths either, with both Nintendo and Microsoft rumoured to be readying for a substantial loss too.

Have you been directly affected by credit crunch, or are you failing to see what all the fuss is about? Let us know in the forums.