Here's a rather strange (and dismaying) rumor that has recently surfaced on the Eurogamer forums. According to a poster there, Free Radical Design employees are currently sitting at a Holiday Inn, wondering why they've been locked out of their offices. This sounds like a good old fashioned shut down, if it's true.
Free Radical is famous for the Timesplitters series and was supposed to be working on a fourth game in the franchise, along with the new Star Wars: Battlefront. Supposedly, the company is no longer answering phone calls and cannot be reached.
On the one hand, this is an unfounded claim on a message board but on the other, it's a very bizarre story to just randomly decide to make up. If true, that's a real shame, not just for the people employed, but for the ever-declining UK games industry. Hopefully it's not as bad as it looks, because I don't want to see another British developer fall apart.
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Contest:
6:52 AM on 12.18.2008
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Also Timesplitters is such a fantastic Console FPS series...it'd be a shame to lose them.
are you kidding? Avatars a f-ing amazing!!!totally original too ;¬)
Because there under Microsoft game studios, haha.
I hope this isn't true. And you know what I fucking hate? Yeah the economic situation right now might be bad but I'll be damned if thats ALL people fucking talk about! The news, the news paper...fucking everywhere and it's just so fucking negative and depressing, nobody needs that.
They could find a cure for fucking HIV and they'd talk about how many people are getting layed off from GM instead.
These are the things I hate.
/End//Rant
P.S on a side note, I really hope this isn't true because I was really looking foward to the new timesplitters game.
If true I will be cranky for a long long time cause the third timesplitters isn't Backward compatible on the 360....:(
Timesplittlers will be missed if this is true.
I was looking forward to Timesplitters 4. I loved TS2 and thought that Future Perfect was pretty good too. Second Sight was AWESOME too.
Well Mr.Emo Timesplitters may not be ShadowOfTheCollosus or MGS3 but it was *fun*. Decent console FPSs are hard to come by.
Anyway, Its hard to hear another developer may have bitten the dust, especially at this time of year huh?
I imagine they had a lot riding on Haze.
My condolences to Free Radical's employees.
the future of video games is a bleak one if there is no timesplitters to look forward to.
sony. if your going to buy up a company go for free radical.
Regardless if Haze was bad, I always had a strong liking for the Timesplitters franchise. Every game in it was really solid and I had many hours spent with them.
It's a shame. I was REALLY looking forward to it.
I guess some other company will take over the franchise, like what EA did with Command & Conquer.
Its the typical game-dev-eggs-in-one-project-that-gets-canned-syndrome.
:(