While they might not be a household name themselves, Australian game and DVD distributor Red Ant are responsible for bringing games to Australia from companies like Midway, Konami, Bethesda and Capcom. However, we're now not sure how many of those games will be arriving on our shores, as the local company has gone into receivership, mere months before the scheduled release of Bionic Commando, Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5.

It's not yet known just what will happen to these titles - nobody is answering the phones in Red Ant's offices, and we are waiting to hear back from the overseas publishers.

Read full article by Jessica Citizen

Gah! Not red ant! If it weren't for them I wouldn't have several great older games I picked up from their bargin bin range.. Nasty..

Ohhh So many old games brought from Red Ant...

Its a bit annoying to see this because they do supply majority of Australia's bargain titles so it'll be harder for us to get these games cheaply and easily. Unless another company takes their place.

Not just budget games, but big name titles got worked through red ant. It's really sad to see that they can't survive. Piracy does not just effect the developers

It's drawing a pretty long bow to blame this on piracy... there is no public information to suggest that is the case at all.

+1

In fact I'd argue that they probably made more profit from Retail than ever- so it can't be piracy.. I'm thinking wages probably caused most of the damage- having a huge company and no work due to the economic crisis effecting the big name publishers and developers is going to hurt you big time.. this is why so many developers are being shut down.. its because there's just not enough work for the amount of staff we have- so its not cost effective enough-- so the developer or publisher gets shut down. The entire industry is feeling it this is why EA had to fire their employees and shut down Pandemic because there just wasn't enough being done there to make it profitable- I mean they did loose that Batman game due to blowing deadline- when you do that you actually end up loosing money rather than profiting.. because again Wages cost the company too much to keep it going.

Its only going to get worse unless the economy stabilizes overnight.. Plz Save us Obama!

Look at it this way... game distribution is almost purely an import business. Exchange rates have wildly fluctuated beyond anyone's expectation over the last few months. My best guess is that Red Ant have become a victim to the crazy financial markets at this point in time.

Mr cyberpunk makes a good point, most game companies are suffering, it's not just pc game devs and distributors who are having it rough. Sony themselves are having a particularly hard time, and you can't really point the finger at piracy for that one.

Still, rather sad really, I always enjoyed looking through the bargain bins at eb for their games, I picked up a few great oldies too (worms and rainbow six 3 are what come to mind since they're sitting right in front of me)..

I'm not saying piracy is the reason. However you can't deny it's effect.

Red Ant weren't exactly the brightest of the bunch, as far as their business goes. This obviously happend due to a range of reasons but it's a safe bet to assume that their poor business accumen contributed greatly. Local publishers (in general) are pretty clueless when it comes to the local market and actually making money. I saw this coming way off.



This post represents only my opinion based on my business dealings with Red Ant over couple of years.

You are entitled to your opinion. I'd be interested to know in what capacity you have had business dealings with Red Ant. A company that 8 years ago was built from nothing, to distributing for Midway, Capcom, Bethesda, Konami amongst a host of other publishers.

That these publishers would all be won over from traditional choices with local offices such as Activision/Atari/Sega/etc. I'm sure demonstrates extremely poor business acumen. But that is only my opinion.

I mean sure I'll agree local publishers do tend to be a bit-- well ill informed when it comes to communicating with overseas clients- Red Ant most likely has failed to find work- its not that they're bad at what they do- its that its becoming harder and harder to attract overseas interest

It's becoming more and more harder to get the big jobs- and more so the industry is still expanding and getting more competitive. Its obvious then that some have to die so that new companies can start up and get jobs. It comes down to survival of the fittest- sadly thats how the industry is now.. and in all honesty I hate it.

Australia is presently sitting in the worst position in terms of our industry as we're entirely reliant on the US. Once they're big houses start to go-- ours will get hit twice as hard. The government is too busy babysitting Mitsubishi and Holden to come to our rescue so expect further closures to occur.

I've dealt with them purely on a wholesale/supplier relationship. I see what you're saying, great ideas need even better execution. Are you really arguing that a business that's in receivership was doing it right? Granted, it's very hard to get going in the Aussie games industry but surely after 8 years as a distributor with the rights to distribute some great games they would be in better shape.