Develop

Who can really listen to Mark Greenshields when it comes to running a studio and having business success in this field? This guy moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow bashing on Edinburgh. Then, he moved to Montreal from Glasgow bashing on Scotland. Then he opened in Dublin, praising the great business environment there, while closing Glasgow and bashing again on Scotland. Now, he's closed down Montreal, bashing on Quebec, while moving to Florida. Oups! I forgot! He closed down Dublin as well!

As an ex-insider of one of Mr Greenshields's disastrous studios, I can tell you exactly what is the problem with DC Studios or now Fireband operating anywhere in the Universe for that matter: Mr Greenshields himself!

After luring people to work for him with all sorts of promises, after having them to work on the most low quality and boring projects you can find in the whole industry and for the most lousy salaries and conditions, he started to complain about the lack of dedication of his staff. They all naturally left one by one to get normal salaries and to work for the big players on very exciting projects, such as Splinter's Cell, Assassin's Creed, Army of Two and Deus X 3. Who would blame them?!

Just by having a look at that shortlist of titles that have been or are being developed in Montreal, it is clear that it's an efficient place to run a gamedev business. Only one condition, though: it has to be a real business, not just a phony one!

What game where you prevented to bring to the market because of the bad environment prevailing in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin and Montreal, Mr Greensheilds?

Mike

That's not exactly accurate: I was in the Montreal office until the last day. The Montreal studio went under because the accountant (and god knows who else) took out a large chunk of cash and ran off. The company was left dead in the water as we were finishing a DS game for lucasarts. Sadly, we were all too busy doing crazy overtime to notice what was going on.

He says staff loyalty is very low? Yes many left, but not without reasons. They promised us no more crazy deadline, just to come up with something even more insane, 6 months from preprod to gold, lots of overtime, not just some rushes near milestones or at the end, but continuously for months.
Many of us did remain loyal, and at the end there were still several developpers that were there from the start. But he was not loyal to us, didn't pay us what he owed us (he owed over 20000$ to some contractors) and stole some DC-Studios IP: he copied the hard drive with DC-Studios DS engine, Firebrand depending on DC's technology.

If he had 5-6 companies that failed in various cities, is it the city thats not suited for a game company, or the man thats not suited to manage such a company?

Everyone knows Mark didn't leave because of a bad work situation in Montreal. Everyone knows, as well, that DC had some of the most loyal employees in the entire city, that stayed on with low salaries and weak projects because they believed in the team. Mark, left because he was one-uped by another crooked Business man that goes by the initials JP.

It would have happened anyway eventually regardless of which of the two crooked businessmen would have stolen everything and left. Both Mark And J. have a pretty good trail of broken businesses behind them.

What would help everybody on the other side of the ocean would be to understand that Europe is a chance. And I'm saying that as while working on those large scale projects in Montreal.

I can testify that DC Studios was NOT lacking skilled developers, and these developers were certainly not lacking loyalty.

Other people in the company lacked loyalty..

The performance achieved by employees during the last year of DC Studios was the best that I have seen in 7 years of career in 4 different companies and 3 different countries.

Yes, Montreal is an efficient place to run a business, several successful Montreal studios prove it.

I don't believe him.

I was blessed to have worked with a solid art team that was firmly nit like a strong family unit at DC Studios. Loyalty was not a problem amongst ourselves, we give our 110%.

But some of us smelled the stench in the air of bad management reeking down the halls. Bad decisions were being made by the brass, and as a Senior Artist I could see the ship sinking from a mile away before it sunk, I jumped ship 1 year before it did and I am thankful that I have made the right choice to leave.

Sadly, many of my former colleagues remained loyal to the end and sweated it until their last drop during their final project.

Ask about Loyalty? You sir turned your back on your own company, as your friendly accountants did too, you guys are the ones who lost loyalty.

The art team, the QA team and the programming team were the most loyal bunch any boss could ever ask for. You sir, turned your back on them.

Now many of them are currently working for better employers at Eidos, Ubi and EA.

Who said Montreal is supposed to be the third world of the video game industry? Yes, the salaries went up... as a result of the increasing quality of what's being produced over here and the experience the developers are gaining.

Other studios about the size (and even smaller) of late DC Studios are still doing good business in Montreal... I'm actually working for one of them!

What is this "attitude" we're supposed to have? Is it too much of "being passionate about our work" and not enough of the "Sit, shut up, and do this piece of crap so I have a little more money in my pocket by the end of the day?" Because what you get in Montreal is that: passion and determination. We learn fast, and for experience we don't have we bring people from all around the world to grow and learn from.

You wanna do cheap and quick money? Well, take your "business" elsewhere and shove it. Oh, and the money you still owe me too.

Good riddance, Mr Greenshield! I wish you keep doing what you do best: crash, burn... and migrate.

The first 4 comments are pretty spot on and there isn't much more to add. But no matter who's the crook and who's to blame, Greenshield's comments are insulting for the sole reason that it wasn't enough for him to blame the market in Montreal, he had to bash on his former employees when most of them were loyal to death.

I left before the ship sank, because it was pretty obvious it would, but no matter how hard I would try to convince my friends to quit, most of them still kept believing in DC Studios. Who could blame them? Giving your life for a company is a great quality any employers would be looking for... or in this case, exploit!

Of course Montreal is an hard place now for small developpers because of Ubisoft and EA being major competitors. Greenshield isn't totally wrong. However, it's not impossible to survive. Look at A2M (by the way I don't work there) for example. They've been in Montreal for approximately as long as DC Studios did before closing and it's now a 300+ employees company and they're still groing in what seem to be a good direction. They used to be small and they're still there... it is obvious that they did something right Greenshield didn't.

On the other side, Greenshield has an history of closing down offices in Dublin, Edimburgh, Glasgow, Montreal and Dallas and from what I know... nobody from Montreal were involved!!!

Loyalty was what DC was made of (minus Mark and his ilk).

The DC team from all departments stayed loyal through missed pays, broken promises and absolutely no support from above and always delivered the best we could.

If only Mark knew how to reward loyalty and talent instead of steal and lie, DC would still be here.

I feel bad for the ones left at Firebrand games who think that they will be able to depend on Mark to build their company.

on and the reason Mark left Montreal, was that due to wanting to by-pass Quebec law requiring immigrants to send their kids to french school, Mark never applied for citizenship. He instead operated under a work Visa that allowed him to stay so long as he owned the company. As soon as DC went bust Mark had to leave the country within 30 days. He did try to start another company up right away, but that ended up not happening since the people hew would use got better jobs right away and he couldn't feed of their desperation.

Montreal is the best place in the world for games right now. Bursting with talent, Government incentives and a low cost of living make this city THE place to be if you are a developer!

I wish he wouldn't lie to the media just to cover his own incompetence!

Johnny Danger is my hero!

He always knows just what to say and just how to say it!

Don't ever change!

Greenshields should look more closely to his track record before saying anything ... no credibility in any of his comments/remarks, which was a true waste of time.

I worked at DC studios for a long time and let me tell you staff loyalty was the only reason anyone stayed around. We knew we were getting raped for cash, we knew we were being forced to make B titles when we had more than enough talent to make triple A. But we wanted to stay because we all loved working with each other: overtime, crunches from 8am to 2pm and it was great. Such a shame that Mark didn't even know any of us by name nor did he even take the time to apologize for what he did to us. And I especially feel bad for the guys in Dallas whom Mark robbed and then destroyed.

Here's what I saw, here's what I know :

We can assume Mark Greenshields consistently took assets/engine/hardware from one studio to bring it to his new baby-toy-studio. Talk about loyalty now…

While working for two companies (DC-Studios and Firebrandgames) at the same time he manage to sink the Montreal studio by “giving” projects to another one. Talk about loyalty now…

When shutting down DC-Studios and laying off 40+ people, Mark Greenshields justified his actions by saying he got robbed by the accountant he hired. Blaming his employees for the loss : talk about managers’ loyalty now…

Employee’s attitude reflects leadership. Leadership was non-existent.

This is typical of Mark, it's never his fault, always someone, or something else has caused his woes. I worked for DC for a long time...it had it's ups and downs, but every single day was a frustrating experience working with the upper management. You got the feeling that they would be just as (in)effective at selling vacuum cleaners as selling our ideas. There was a saddening lack of games knowledge from the guys who were supposed to be running a games company and the whole time I was there I was witness to a string of ridiculous business decisions and missed opportunities. We *believed* at DC, that was what kept us together, belief that the talent we had was way great than the sum of its parts. It's a great shame we all got utterly shafted and there is obvious bitterness, but the greater shame is the talent of the company being driven by a blind driver with no map...or any clue how to drive.

And as for Montreal being no good for games, that's utter nonsense. Mr Greenshields was no good for Montreal and we are glad he's gone. Good luck to his new disaster waiting to happen.

"He says that the Montreal tax environment has skewed the region's industry towards large-scale projects only with large number of unskilled developers."

Is it me or is calling for UK to institute tax breaks exactly the kind of thing that Greenshields is bashing Montreal for doing? Except that now it's country-wide instead of just a city.

Maybe Greenshields and Infinium Labs should start up a joint venture.

Employee loyalty is what permitted DC's biggest titles (?) to be made. To raise this as an issue truly shows a strong complacency for people and a total disconnection with production…
At least my specs are on straight.

What a slap in the face; Luckily I think we're all better off without this person who can betray us even hundreds of miles away. Montreal has evolved and the talents have matured and it's only normal that we have come to expect a little pat on the back for our efforts. I have two regrets; That I may never work with so many dedicated people at the same time again and that I believed the lies for so long.
We were a great team. I will not forget.

Having worked for Mark in the Glasgow office on & off for about 6 years, I had more than enough experience of his total lack of compassion for his employees. I was among the first he took on when he opened the Glasgow office, and it really didn't take too long for us to figure out just what motivated the guy. Mark's interest in running a games company really never seemed to be much about making good games - he just seemed to want to swan about, smug in the knowledge that he could tell folk he owned a games company. He made use of several incentive schemes extant in Scotland at the time to set up the office, then when we started making some decent profit, he took that money out of Glasgow to set up the Montreal office. Which is all well & good in itself - there's nothing wrong with expanding your company, except that at this point he laid off most of the employees in Glasgow (leaving about 4 or 5 of us, I think, including the studio manager), and repeatedly delayed payment to those remaining, and even payment of bills. Still, at least now I get to be amused every time there's mention of him in trade press, as the reaction from former employees tends to have a certain ... wry slant ;D

Ah...the revealing power of the internet.

It must be nice to know that as soon as you poke your little rodent face out of your burrow to make a comment, the people you have wronged fling ten thousand buckets of crap at you.

Good luck with further PR Mark! Remember...slugs leave a trail.

At least the other crooks from the Montreal office know how to keep a low profile! You don't see Gerry or Jonathan Price, who are probably just as guilty as Mark, writing insulting articles about the Montreal Games industry to cover up their schemes.

****roaches survive by staying out of the light! Mark, you by now, should know this.

Show your face and people will step on you :0

for christ's sake mark; are you on drugs or something? your had the business sense of my big, hairy bumhole. I doubt you can even define what a business is... never had a vision, objectives, where to go... Yeah, in your own little brain you're probably thinking you were just thinking of yourself but not even that. Your far too thick man. Just look where you are now. Anyway, most of us are better off now and you are not. Must be the karma thing, eh?

The true team that was DC has proven in all this that a company is not a one man show. All these posts declaring loyalty to Montreal, to former teammates and to what was the real essence of DC proves that it is the people that make a company. It is not a one man show, as Mark tried to make everyone believe.

If he would have been a part of the team (or at least) left the team to do their work DC would still be around and making better games every time.

He just couldn't keep his hand out of the cookie jar and treated us all like work rats.

We still made some nice games under those conditions though. And that is the result of a team that cared enough to go to any lengths to create quality even with no support.

Especially in our last year of operations. Mark why couldn't you build with that instead of destroying it?

Mark Greenshields is a greedy, cowardly little man.
In the same few weeks as he made our entire team redundant, he sent the team round an email offering us discounted rates on hiring his new florida holiday-home.
I understand that businesses go bust, and that people's wages can be lost when that happens, but in 2 months of ceaselessly trying to chase up unpaid wages (before the studio went bust) he blankly refused to answer any call i made to him, and would not answer a single question i put to him.
I worked at DC studios for a short 13 months, I was paid on payday 4 times, again with no apologies or straight answers. By the end, it was simply the norm that we were never paid on time, no one expected to recieve wages til at least a week after payday.
And this man has the audacity to speak about loyalty.

ABOUT MONTREAL:
Montreal is a good place for companies right now since there's a lot of experienced people. It will still have an edge until cheaper places (East Europe & Asia) becomes as experienced.

ABOUT LOYALTY:
Montreal's people are really loyal if they find a place with good working conditions and/or a cool project to work on.

ABOUT MARK:
Well, do I have to add anything else ? He owes me 2000$ !

(by luis) "The Montreal studio went under because the accountant (and god knows who else) took out a large chunk of cash and ran off".

Luis, come on! You can't look me in the eye and say there isnt a good chance that large chunk of cash is sitting in Mark's bank account right now, or "invested" in his florida retreat. You didn't learn your lesson from caveman? There were several crooks on that project as well. Its easy to blame the accountant once he/she is gone.

You have to wonder how people who consistently fail in business seem to never run out of cash.

As for Mark not applying for citizenship, I think that has nothing to do with french laws or visas... I think the answer is much simpler:
The guy didnt want to file a tax return. Since he was out of country he probably wasnt filing taxes in the UK either, or anywhere. 8 years of tax-free unchecked finances.

Quebec tax breaks has attracted a lot of talent to Montreal. Unfotunately it also attracted parasites who smell "free money".

Greenshields is really ungratefull.I move from France to Montreal to work with gifted and recommended developers.
After the closing of DC, we met and Greenshields said to me "I made mistakes" and proposed me to work
again with him LOL. GUYS DONT TRUST.

He proposed not only to Vincent D, but also Dan and Steve, possibly others as well. They of course refused!
From what I heard, the sound guys were working again for him after that, but this time as contractors, not employees. IMO that would be a mistake from their part, if you look at what happened to Guillaume V. and the 2 Crayola guys (all 3 were by contract too, not employees) . From what guillaume told me, Mark Greenshields stopped paying them at some point and owns them around 20000$

"(Zenboy) Luis, come on! You can't look me in the eye and say there isnt a good chance that large chunk of cash is sitting in Mark's bank account right now"

That goes without saying. A guy who takes the HDtv, the Xbox360, a couple of wii devkits, an engine and everything else he can pocket a few days before he declares that he's closing shop is someone I guaranty has money in the bank he shouldn't have. However, what sank DC at the very end was J Price. I think Mark resents that he got swindled first. This is probably what he means by "I made mistakes".

If we are talking about Crayola, there was also a young freelancer who did some illustrations for the game that was never paid! This was his first job ever and this is his memory of it.

On top of it all, it seems that this may even have been his first job in Canada!

there was also an American artist who would drive up from Vermont to help us out on ATV who was not paid!

So, not only does Mark put down Montreal in writing, but he also ruins the reputation of the entire country without even being from here!

What nerve.

Mark, hire a pr firm or fire the one you're using. To think that this article would not spark negative comments after what you (and others) did just shows how clueless and/or callus you are.

Develop, wouldn't this make an interesting article?

YES! ABSOLUTELY!!! THIS IS YOUR JOB MICHAEL!! It's definitely a scoop here! The crook of games do it again for the 4th time in a row! Shouldn't the global gamedev community know about it and be prepared! Everybody knows who this guy is in Scotland and Quebec! Let's not Florida learn it the had way again! Mike! You gotta do something about it! Do your job. Make a story with an impartial analysis. you're the best journalist in this industry worldwide! We count on YOU!

"Develop is the leading trade news and community site for all professionals working in the UK and international video games development sector "

"Breaking news and the latest jobs for European games developers."

Both are team Develop's mottos, the once respectable and once reliable webzine. But how can they call themselves the voice of video games development when their writers obviously do not do research on their sources and their stories before publishing. When the only "professional and reliable" contact within the gaming industry that they can get for an interview is Mark Greenshields. Obviously they are scrapping the bottom of the barrel. As you can see the real story was right under your noses and it wasn't tax breaks in Quebec and the ramblings of a so-called successful CEO of many failed video game studios.

I bet Develop knew exactly what it was doing when it ran both the piece and the news story - Mark's reputation no doubt preceeds him, and his comments were bound to provoke a reaction. So those criticising the magazine are missing the point.

Greenshields lose at the Internet. This guy has some balls to say stuff like that and believe that no one will stand up and talk about his shady business practices. This guy shouldn't have the right to manage an ice cream stand, even less a studio.

Read at http://www.gamefoc...d=253
You can find here Stéphane D’Astous, Eidos Montréal’s General Manager reaction. Stéphane says that Greenshields missed the boat, but now I think he had sabotaged the boat.

Develop has a reference to that article at gamefocus, with some more comments:
http://www.develop...s-sad

i seem to remember enigma variations doing a lot of low grade quick games, run by "fatty mark" as he was known back then..i dont know anyone who is fond of him and that was around 1990 ish..so this has happened before glasgow etc...

Mark Greenshields was 10 pounds of **** in a 9 pound bag when he came to Montreal.
The ONLY reason he came to MTL was for the tax credits therefore again he's full of ****.
I think the industries four walls will close up on him in the near future and he won't have a pot to piss in, never mind develop games.