It's a story as old as time ....
Message:... game company makes it big ...
... game company spends the bounty on a trip to Taco Bell ...
... finances spiral and things go poorly ....
... game company screws the free lancers ...
https://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2016/08/on-shadow-catalyst-part-i.html
In case you don't want to read (ICYDWTR -- is that a thing), the makers of Shadow Run 4th edition, had some shenanigans in their finances. Little guy gets hurt.
I think they ended up with Battle Tech as well.
Small industry. The dollars shown were something like the owner took ~ $300K over a 5 year period. Stay in school kids and go to work at an auto parts store.
The Internet is hard to read context sometimes. Sometimes the math just doesn't work. It looks like the company had 4 full time employees. And, freelancers. While the initial products looked good, there's just not enough there. And, they had 2 (or more) pretty well known products.
Clean up the books. Pay of what you can and let it be a lesson learned.
Yours,
IronConrad
04-Jan-2021