For anyone who has been following Realtime Worlds, developers behind Crackdown who went into administration six weeks following the release of its 5 year development title All Points Bulletin, it will come as no surprise to learn that the company was not saved financially and is no more. The forums for All Points Bulletin will be shut down immediately, though the servers will stay up for now, and the remaining skeleton workforce will be made redundant, but unlike their previously laid off workmates the remaining few will be given three weeks redundancy pay.
Said Realtime Worlds' Dave Jones:
"I truly wish we had the chance to continue to craft APB into the vision we had for it. It has been a long & difficult journey but ultimately rewarding to have had the chance to try something bold and different. APB holds some great memories, from the last night of the beta, to the clans and individuals who amazed us with their creativity and sense of community. I am so sorry it had to end so quickly but hopefully the good memories will stay with us all for a long time. Thanks to all the team for the years of hard work, and to the players who contributed so much."
It is another dark day for the UK games industry and clearly something has gone very wrong higher up in this company as over 200 employees passionate about this industry are left struggling to find jobs in an already difficult market. I know I wish them all the best of luck in all their future work but Seriously guys, if I were you I would be taking a few of those Alienware laptops home with me.
Hollie Bennett is Destructoid's UK Community Manager and video producer/personality. She also the host of
our British podcast, models, and will totally drink you under the table boys.
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Contest:
1:40 PM on 09.16.2010 | 
WoW, FF and Guild Wars seem to be pretty stiff competition in the MMO market and it's the rare game that seems to last any length of time. :(
Having watched several videos of it, the character design options for both criminals and enforcers seem to cater toward what thirteen-year-olds would consider badass; everyone seems to be obsessed with making Tank Girl, except with extra-gigantic tits.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Either way though, sucks for the people out of work.
APB sucked.
Good riddance to the company. Hopefully whoever was actually good on their staff can find dome jobs.
Hopefully the people that lost their jobs can find a new one soon and continue making great games.
Stopped right there. They refused to listen to the community in beta? Ok, have it your way.
some of the guys should have stayed with rockstar.
The managerial team at the top do not deserve to have the jobs they got almost immediately afterwards (at Ubi, I think).
This game was a great concept destroyed by the fact that the people in charge at the top were apparently right pricks about the game and refused to change things or make sure the game was fun, simply because the game was already "perfect" to them and damn what the testers think.
It's a costly mistake, and the people who are paying for it did nothing wrong. The people responsible get away with new jobs elsewhere. It's pretty sickening.
what
Sucks to hear about 200 people loosing jobs but this game looked boring as fudge.
How can a company compete or expect to compete against WoW and the upcoming KoToR?
It seems like bad business practice in the development stages to me.....they should have done crackdown II instead, anything would have been better than that garbage.
As a beta tester of this I was massively disappointed, and am both happy and sad that this clusterfuck has burnt into the ground in some ways.
RTW, you were a talented bunch but in future, please listen to your fucking community when they tell you your game plays like warm horseshit!
Pro-tip: don't release a half baked, MMO with no content into the teeth of World of Warcraft, your natural competition. Good MMOs are able to survive. Ones that fail to launch fail to survive. Man up, raise your game, or don't bitch when 75% of your player base leaves after 3 weeks to go back to whatever they were playing before.
I figured this would happen but fuck me not this quick!!
Such a bummer!
At least it's not as drawn out as 3D Realms.
Good luck to the employees who were let go.
But they must have royally fucked up if they couldn't even find a buyer.
madness
SHOCKER.
This is a sad statement about the industry on many levels... blowing 100 million dollars, not listening to beta feedback, games as a service being sold as packaged product, etc. etc..
"Stern-sounding codes of conduct were emailed around that, whatever their intent, in practice scared many developers away from interacting directly with our users. Not to worry, though, because our Community team was on the case! Except if a forum post was about a bug, because that wasn’t their area … bugs were for Customer Support. Who, naturally, didn’t read the forums … because that was Community’s job!"
http://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/
Talk about miss-management! Sad the game turned out like it did, it had potential. Only if only they had listen to feedback instead of writing it off. It seems that the money they had went to their heads and they didn't worry about how much they were spending till it was too late.....remind you of anyone else? *cough*3DR*cough*
The only difference is 3D Realms had enough of their own money to spend for 10 years.
From the guy who created GTA and Crackdown... yeah!
Character customization like you've never seen before... preach it, brother!
Multiplayer-only... wait, what?
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Best wishes to all the newly job-seeking.
Seriously, how many decent games are not made because of all these MMO flops?
no man, i think the art team should lend a hand on Brink instead. :D
What does a, to be quite frank, shit game failing have anything to do with PC exclusive games as a whole? PC games sell as long as the product isn't shit, you market it correctly and listen to feedback.
@AzNheadbanger
Bad spending is bad spending. It doesn't matter if it's your money or some investors money.