“These charges consist of approximately $50 million to $65 million associated with office space reductions, approximately $40 million to $55 million related to employee severance and employee-related costs, and $35 million to $45 million in costs associated with licensor commitments,” reads the filing.
The severance I get, but why is closing offices costing them so much. And what are “ licensor commitments?”
cause commercial rental is a commitment, if you can’t find another company to take over your lease, chances are you have to pay the majority of left over amount + penalty + restoration. Licensor commitments are similar but probably on tech/software licensing, ie. server rentals, Maya/Speedtree licensing agreement for the site, whatever cloud service they use for backup and share stuff, etc. Those at bigger scale aren’t paid year to year like your regular indie studio just subscribe to Adobe/Autodesk for app uses per seat.
Every big UK company I have worked for doesn’t own its building. They will typically agree to rent a building for 5-20 years at a fixed rate (longer times if its being purpose built for them) .
So I would expect this is paying out the rest of the rental agreements for a building to escape the building lease.
It is to do with financial reporting and the way asset and operational costs are reported.
The severance I get, but why is closing offices costing them so much. And what are “ licensor commitments?”
cause commercial rental is a commitment, if you can’t find another company to take over your lease, chances are you have to pay the majority of left over amount + penalty + restoration. Licensor commitments are similar but probably on tech/software licensing, ie. server rentals, Maya/Speedtree licensing agreement for the site, whatever cloud service they use for backup and share stuff, etc. Those at bigger scale aren’t paid year to year like your regular indie studio just subscribe to Adobe/Autodesk for app uses per seat.
Probably all the hardware and shit they have at those offices, too. Likely all leased.
Maybe getting out of fixed leases?
Yeah, that would make sense. Commercial leases can be up to a decade long.
Every big UK company I have worked for doesn’t own its building. They will typically agree to rent a building for 5-20 years at a fixed rate (longer times if its being purpose built for them) .
So I would expect this is paying out the rest of the rental agreements for a building to escape the building lease.
It is to do with financial reporting and the way asset and operational costs are reported.