According to the report, TopWare Interactive has filed for bankruptcy after years of legal problems involving alleged software piracy. In 1999 the company lost a multi-million-mark lawsuit, and the company’s former chief executive Dirk Hassinger — accused of tax evasion in a separate proceeding — is currently serving time in prison. Altogether, not a very pretty picture.
Although TopWare Interactive is not a Macintosh game developer, two of their titles — Earth 2140 and Earth 2150, two real time strategy games — have been licensed for Macintosh conversion by Epic Interactive.
Epic Interactive boss Thomas Steiding says that TopWare’s difficulties won’t impact his company’s business plans at all.
“It does not have any negative effect on our ports of Earth 2140, 2150, Gorky 17 or other games that we do want to port,” said Steiding in a recent e-mail.
Epic has a background in Amiga game conversion and announced last year plans to bring several titles to the Macintosh. They recently released a playable demo version of Earth 2140 for the Mac, as well. The company has also completed a Mac conversion of the graphical adventure game Simon the Sorcerer II, originally developed by Adventure Soft.