Interplay Offices Closed

The latest Interplay news on GameSpot reports that the company’s offices have been closed by California labor investigators due to the company’s inability to pay employees. A snippet to follow:

Less than a day after CEO Herve Caen said Interplay was “still here,” the publisher has apparently been shut down by the State of California. The Orange County Register’s Tamara Chuang reported late Friday that California’s Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement forced the Irvine, CA-based developer-publisher of Fallout to suspend operations.

The closure followed a snap inspection of Interplay’s offices by investigators, who found the company was without workers’ compensation insurance and had not paid employees. According to officials, there were 14 staffers on-site Friday during the inspection, and 79 still on Interplay’s payroll–down nearly 40 since their mid-April financial statements.

The labor officials’ visitation was prompted by complaints by seven Interplay workers who claimed their wages had gone unpaid. Dean Fryer, spokesman for the California Labor Commissioner, told the Register, “An employer has responsibilities when they open a business. The responsibilities include proper and timely payment of wages. It includes providing workers compensation coverage in case there are injuries. If the employer cannot accommodate those basic issues of doing business, we cannot allow employees to work.”