Mad Catz is back, and its factory workers made it happen

A feel-good story to start 2018

This cat has at least two lives. Mad Catz, a long-time gaming peripheral company that shut down in March 2017, has been improbably resurrected. 

Ahead of next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Mad Catz has announced that it’s back with a new line of accessories. Its (re)debut products are called: RAT (a mouse), STRIKE (a keyboard), FREQ (a headset), and GLIDE (a gaming surface). No new FightStick was revealed, but the brand was acknowledged in a press release; it seems as if this revived Mad Catz wants to focus on more traditional gaming peripherals at first.

More interesting than its products is the story of how Mad Catz was saved. According to CNET, it’s employees at a Mad Catz factory in China that led the charge to salvage it from bankruptcy. They formed a holding company and now they’ll be working for themselves. Quite literally, the people who were making the peripherals are the ones who bought the company. This new Mad Catz is officially named Mad Catz Global Limited, and its headquarters is in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

It’s widely accepted that Mad Catz’s downfall was tied to a single ill-fated business decision: To co-publish and manufacture the peripherals for Rock Band 4. With that seemingly squarely in the past, it’ll be interesting to see what Mad Catz can do now that it has a second chance.

Mad Catz, maker of gaming peripherals, is back from the dead [CNET]