Mobile companies equally prone to accounting errors

Videogame royalty auditor Media Forensics has told MobileIndustry.biz that mobile gaming companies are still making mistakes in their accounting records, despite having less numbers to deal with than their PC and console counterparts.

Media Forensics, which was established in 2002 by Tim Christian and Faye Sieracki, specialises in analysing and auditing royalty and distribution agreements to ensure companies are paid in full.

The company has worked with a wide range of developers and publishers from both the PC and console and mobile gaming sectors - and has found similarities when it comes to the mistakes which are often made.

According to Christian, mobile gaming is "equally prone to misinterpretation of contracts, of royalty statements not adding up, and of information from the mobile phone operators not being correct - so there's still work to be done there".

However, he continued, "The numbers are much smaller with mobile phones. You don't have mobile phone games selling $150 million worth of downloads - we wish they did.

"The principal difference between auditing a video game and a downloadable mobile phone game is that videogames tend to have costs of goods needing to be audited; marketing needing to be audited, whereas you don't tend to get that with downloads or mobile phone games. So it's a shorter and more straightforward audit."

But just because the auditing process is simpler, Christian explained, it doesn't mean Media Forensics is any less likely to uncover mistakes.

"What you're getting is information from the mobile phone operators that go into the mobile game publishers - which is all electronic," he said,

"And because you don't have these issues such as worrying about cost of goods and marketing, it's actually a much simpler process. But it's still prone to error."

To read more from Christian visit our sister site, GamesIndustry.biz.