aries100
SasqWatch
My understanding is that US bankruptcy law places employee compensation claims at the top of the creditor list during the bankruptcy proceedings. That means employees would be paid… eventually. But bankruptcy takes time. How many of us could easily handle a multi-month delay in receiving our paychecks? It'd still be quite a hardship and I can understand a manager wanting to spare employees from that if he thought it possible.
That said, one does not screw around with the IRS. They seem to think that all your money is theirs, and any they deign to let you keep is a gift for which you should be duly grateful — and they have guns to back up their attitude.
I don't know about the US or other countries, but I do know that in Denmark there is a fund (called the guarantee fund for workers) that'll step in and pay the workers' paychecks in the case where a business is going down or has declared banktruptcy).
Isn't there also a difference in thr US if you declare chapter 7 or 11? (of some law or bill).
As for the IRS, I'm pretty sure that in Denmark at least, we would have talked about it.
And maybe the boss would be charged and get a fine or a suspended sentence here, because it wasn't intentional what he did. And what he did was out of care for his employees or workers.
I guess that the 401k money is pension money for the workers? or some other government regulated stuff? And I'd guess it is illegal to use this money to pay wages with? in the US at least...
In Denmark, the situation is different. Here we have unions, they have trade agreements, they have a collective pensionfund where you pay 8% or 15% of your salary or wage to that fund. This fund then invests the money in say windmills...or other stuff...
As for Bedlam and the Daggerdale game, I'd think the same, Bedlam Studios went through their advance very quickly, I'd guess. If a game company do not have a strong CFO or no-sayer in the financial department, money will burn - and burn - and burn - through the devs. pockets rapidly. For the very simple reason that most devs. are creative people that maybe sometimes are not always very practical when it comes to money. E.g. they forget to set money aside for stamps, or books, or some other stuff while buying expensive desks etc. etc.
Maybe this was the case here? Bedlam got a lot of money in advance, saw the $$$$ and spent and spent and spent it all. Untill it was all gone. That why a financial plan (-eh- a budget?) is needed so that the money will stretch for a long time.