4J STUDIOS, the growing Dundee video games development business of entrepreneur Chris van der Kuyl, has reported another year of profit, the com-pany's accounts have revealed.
Mr van der Kuyl was on holiday yesterday and could not be reached for comment.
However, industry insiders said the company’s results reflected “increased activity” in the Scottish digital games sector after the collapse of Realtime Worlds, which closed last year under the weight of its debts.
4J Studios, which employs 15 full-time staff, filed its latest accounts under special Companies Act provisions, which allow small companies to produce abbreviated financial statements, and no pre-tax profit or turnover figures were available.
The business, which has developed a number of popular games, such as Star Trek: Conquest, Banjo-Kazooie, Wuggle and Perfect Dark, for console game systems including Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s PlayStation, Nintendo’s Wii and DS systems and Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, posted a retained profit of £82,865 for the year to the end of October 2010.
Mr van der Kuyl, who is best-known as the founder of now-defunct Dundee-based computer games developer VIS Entertainment, is also the chief executive of Brightsolid, the IT business owned by Dundee media dynasty DC Thomson.
The company was established in 2005 by Mr van der Kuyl, the chief executive and non-executive director, and two other former VIS Entertainment developers, Paddy Burns and Frank Arnot.
4J’s accounts also reveal that at the end of the year, £377,490 was “due to the company” by Mr van der Kuyl and £228,796 was “due to the company” by Mr Burns.
The accounts added: “It is intended that these amounts will be repaid with nine months of the year end.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article