Acclaim Entertainment Inc, the Glen Cove, New York games publisher which has seen it fair share of troubles recently, has had another stroke of bad luck – this time in the form of disgraced sportscaster Marv Albert. The company, which has refocused itself to rely on higher sales of fewer games (CI No 3,125), is set to release a game which features Marv Albert’s voice, despite the lurid details that surfaced during his trial and subsequent guilty plea to an assault charge. The game, NFL Quarterback Club ’98, is set to ship in late October and has Albert’s well-recognized voice doing play-by-play announcing of the action on the virtual football field. Acclaim says that the game was in production when Albert was first indicted, and work continued based on his assurance that the charges against him had no merit. It seems that by the time of the sportscaster’s guilty plea last week the game was ready to go and Acclaim has decided to ship it anyway. A spokesperson said that marketing and packaging for the product would not be featuring Albert’s name and his association with it isn’t expected to have a negative impact on sales. The company couldn’t comment on the structure of Albert’s compensation, although they suggested that he would not be receiving royalties based on unit sales. Acclaim could ill afford to take the financial loss that would result from scrapping the game’s release. In July, it reported a nine-month net loss of $105.5m on revenue down 32% at $147.3m. In May the company laid off 115 workers in an effort to cut costs by about $40m a year.
