London based video game royalty auditor Media Forensics, which represents several UK developers and publishers, has announced plans to build upon its European operations by expanding into North America.
Media Forensics was established in 2002 by Tim Christian and Faye Sieracki, and currently represents independent developers and publishers by analyzing and auditing their royalty and distribution agreements to ensure that their clients realize all of the money owed to them. Media Forensics' services are currently utilized by several prominent video game companies, such as Bethesda, Criterion, Zoo Digital, Blitz Games, and Rebellion.
Specifically, the firm notes that it scrutinizes its client's contracts and royalty statements to ascertain the presence of such potentially costly oversights as understated sales revenues, overstated manufacturing/distribution and marketing costs, inappropriate low price selling activity and overstated bad debt provisions.
“Having clearly demonstrated that our services are of great financial benefit to our European clients, we are ready to extend our reach to North America,” commented Media Forensics' co-founder and director, Tim Christian. “As the games industry continues to mature it will adopt the audit practices commonly used in other areas of the entertainment sector. For example, it is common in the movie and television segments for ‘talent’ – musicians, actors and authors – to engage auditors to perform annual audits of royalties as a matter of course.”
He added: “Media Forensics is ready to fulfill these needs for video game developers and publishers in North America as well as Europe.”
