Anomalies at Companies House

It's about giving false credentials of the company on the official site. By the way, this one is fraud without possibility of any excuse.

I'm no 22Cans apologist but I think it's important to take a rational approach to this kind of information.



In the UK your registered business address does not need to be the premises from which you actually conduct your business. It's simply a correspondence address, and many small companies engage accountancy or law firms to provide registered office services. This is the case for 22Cans and the registered address in London. It is common practice in the UK and does not represent an "anomaly".



I'm unsure exactly what you're getting at here. 22Cans is a small, young company doesn't have a huge archive of records against its name. Companies House holds all the expected data about 22Cans as a company, and that's the primary source for publicly available documentation. I don't think it's reasonable to draw conclusions based on a quick scan of Google results.

The number 22Cans provided on their website looks like a DUNS number, which is different to the company number. It isn't actually the correct DUNS number for 22Cans, which may be a typo - I don't see them gaining themselves any kind of advantage by mis-stating this, as the registered company number can be found in an instant from Companies House.



Perhaps the story of incorporation has been slightly summarised for the benefit of the media, but I don't see anything suspect about this. Yes, the paperwork for incorporation was filed by Dimitri. This doesn't mean 22Cans wasn't operating before this in some capacity as a sole trader enterprise. Maybe Dimitri was asked to file the paperwork in advance to bag the company name and get administrative processes in motion. I don't really see what it matters.



I'm also interested to see the 2014 accounts, but it's very difficult to draw any kind of conclusions from the 2013 statements. Firstly, 22Cans was very much in the early stages of maturation at this point. Secondly, as a small company it was only required to file abbreviated accounts, therefore we don't know what their revenue or expenses were for the period. Dumping numbers down from the balance sheet with no context isn't particularly meaningful.

The annual return isn't very interesting. It's just a statement of various bits of company information, such as the company address, the details of directors and what the company does. It does include a statement of share capital, which is £10825. You can see how these shares were stated as divided up here: www.endole.co.uk/company/07955622/22cans-ltd I don't think this has changed in any interesting way over the last year.

It appears that just yesterday a new document got added - an appointment termination for director Timothy Rance. Tim Rance was one of the original founders of 22Cans, and also founded Lionhead Studios with Peter back in the 90s. He's listed on the 22Cans website as "technical director" but we don't hear much about him so I'm unsure what his day-to-day job at the studio might have been.

It could mean either. He will certainly be stepping down as director, but whether or not he'll also leave the company altogether is a different matter. It would be very interesting if he simply made the decision to step down as director whilst remaining an employee.

Responsibilities of the company directors: www.gov.uk/running-a-limited-company

I definitely wouldn't want those responsibilities, if I worked for 22Cans.

Tim still has an interest in 22Cans, he's got a 9% shareholding. With his termination 22Cans is left with two directors, Peter Molyneux and Dimitri. I don't think either of this guys have a whole lot of business sense, since Dimitri is just a developer and PM makes one bad decision after another. Will be interesting to see what happens next.

Yeah, it's a bit odd. Dimitri is listed on "About us" as a programmer. He has a 1% shareholding in 22Cans and is one of the studio co-founders, but at that stage in his career (according to his LinkedIn) his past experience had been two and a half years at Lionhead as a graduate programmer. In the community we've mostly heard his name connected with bottlenecks in development, since apparently he was the sole person capable of handling follower AI. There's probably some story behind all this - maybe Tim and Peter recognised him as a talent at Lionhead and were keen to have him on board.

Well, Tim Rance has been removed from the 22Cans "About us" page therefore I think we can safely conclude that he has left the company.

Fascinating. Jack Attridge, who was nobody, left with an enormous fanfare and an interview in the Guardian. Tim Rance, who is an industry veteran, studio co-founder, company director and probably the biggest name at 22Cans second to PM himself, leaves quietly through the back door with nary a whisper.