Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
All Points Bulletin: Rumored Job Losses at Realtime Worlds
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
According to two independent reports from GamesIndustry.biz and VG247.com, Realtime Worlds has cut 60 jobs mainly from the team charged with developing Project: My World. Last month, Realtime Worlds announced that it was restructuring and that 'redundant' jobs would be cut but indicated that the number of jobs lost would be relatively minor and that several individuals would be moved fulltime to the APB team. The new reports from inside sources seem to show otherwise.
From GamesIndustry.biz:
GamesIndustry.biz understands that at least two high-profile publishers have turned down the opportunity to partner with Realtime Worlds for the release of Project: MyWorld, and the lay-offs have affected development of the ambitious game.
From VG247.com:
A source said: “The MyWorld team has been completely laid off.
“As many as 60 may have gone, but there’s a rumour they may be trying to sell the team as a smaller entity. I don’t know the exact figure.”
It gets worse. An email was apparently sent to staff yesterday saying there could be drastic cuts made to newly-launched crime MMO APB.
Rumours are now circulating that the Scottish developer is seeking to sell on APB entirely. VG247 has been told today that the company has spent more than $100 million in total.
Both sites are working to get some confirmation of the layoffs. We'll keep you posted.
Comments
wow this pretty much means that all the people making content for this game are gone then???
It appears that the devs for the -new- game are the jobs that have been cut.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ahhh I just looked up project: my world it looked interesting! I guess its dead now?
Dev team for APB has not been laid off;)
90% of haters are begging for love. 10% just want a little attention -- Paulo Coelho
Money problems in one faucet of the companies operations indicate problems in all phases. You can bet this has affected ABP too.
APB seems to be a love or dislike game. Several acquaintences have said they did not like the repetitiveness of the game and quickly burned out on it, yet I have seen many posts indicating some people like it.
Players are fickle, the genre is crowded and if you don't keep your game updated people will migrate to something else.
Very long story short:
1) Bought game, bought $10 "APB Points" off their website. Got points credited to acct.
2) Spent some of those points on in-game items.
3) Decided game wasn't for me at this time, haven't logged in since.
4) A few weeks ago I was refunded my $10 for those points (No idea why, didn't ask for it)
5) Minutes later, my account was banned for using a 'fradulent' key to acquire points.
I went round and round with APB tech support about this issue. I'd like to keep my acct in good standing....just in case, ya know? Anyway, the people I spoke with took absolutely no ownership of their own internal issues, or even offered an apology as to why this happened. The offered to un-ban me if I'd repurchase those points on their website. As silly as it sounds, I actually did TRY to buy them back, but naturally, something was wrong with their checkout system, so after trying 2 credit cards and PayPal, I said screw it.
This is my APB story. They seem like complete amatures when it comes to service at least. As for the game, there is a reason I only played for 3-4 days. If you like getting ganked, and you don't mind doing the same thing, over and over and over and over again...then this game is for you.
Not yet, but re-read the quote. It says it is possible that APB will be sold off too. Sometimes I hate being right but a lot of people tried to tell RTW that APB had a horrible business model to start with. It's a shame really, APB has potential but it's not worth a sub.
"Rumours are now circulating that the Scottish developer is seeking to sell on APB entirely. VG247 has been told today that the company has spent more than $100 million in total."
If they spent $100mil on APB they certainly wasted a lot of money on non-game developement items.
How the hell did these guys spend 100m on TWO ZONES?
Absolutely ridiculous...
Well, this is disappointing news. I was hoping the game would do well. I was also hoping this game would make it to the 360, but it seems like trying to launch games to the 360 is truly bad luck, so far every game that has tried apart from FF and PSU has failed miserably.. and I mean failed as in, very poor subscriptions.
The idea behind APB seemed great, just poor execution. I think if they could build on it and get a rerelease they could have a shot to nix some of those negative reviews.
This game was going to have limited customers. Making it subscription or time-cost-based did not do it any favors.
I understand they wanted to test out a new model, but it didn't work out.
Remind anyone of the start of Hellgate London's fall from grace?
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, riddle 'em with bullets
I think someone at RTW figured out a way to spend as little as possible on churning out a hollow facade of a game, so that they could pocket the rest.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
These rumors being true would not surprise me at all. While I saw this coming, I was hoping the game would fix the issues and go to a f2p payment model like we were led to believe it would have originaly. It will be a shame if APB goes under, it has some real potential but if it does, RTW have only themselves to blame. Their beta testers cried out out at for months and were completely ignored, they tried to silence the press reviews after the game launched, and they wasted so much money on conventions and pointless advertising (the human avatar, like that made anyone buy the game? lol) that should have been put into development.
I guess it would depend on whether they mean "laid off" in the correct sense. In that, "we're going to not pay these people for a while til' we can afford to, again." In that case, I'd say it might see the light of day. But "laid off" seems to pretty much mean fired in the gaming industry.
Given that APB isn't exactly ripping up the MMO world, I'd say its chances aren't too good.
None of these rumour have been confirmed, the $100 million statement is a joke and from the latest patch notes there is still a very large team working on the game with no signs of that changing.
IMO this is just BS from some minor gaming websites desperate for readers/visitors/people to look at their ads for more revenue.
They have been warned in the beta by me and at least few more people that the games doesn't offer enough to be considered by players as pay to play. I suppose it was too late for any changes.
I hope it will be a warning for any other developers trying to fool people into paying for a game which offers less then any good modern multiplayer game.
I'm not surprised. I found the game borind and droll and to top it off the payment plan is just plain odd. Bad games don't last.
I hate to say i told you so, but i did.
Interesting news, sad given this game only just barely came out.
The MMO genre is turning into a bloody battlefield, but maybe that will turn out good for the players in the end. It will force companies to really craft their games well and give us a good finished product.
GamesIndustry.biz is hardly a minor gaming site. That said, the 100 million -is- a bit high. It's "only" $81 million. Check the funding numbers here: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/realtime-worlds
GamesIndustry has also updated their article:
While the exact number is unnamed, the fact that layoffs have occurred is.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, apparently, they only spent $81 million on two zones. lol
As for how?
Anybody wanna wager on how many new houses and cars were bought by the guys in charge of RT?
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
And yachts, and swiss bank accounts, a caribbean vacations
Some people sure can scam the system. WOW, jsut WOW!!
Gaming since Avalon Hill was making board games.
Played SWG, EVE, Fallen Earth, LOTRO, Rift, Vanguard, WoW, SWTOR, TSW, Tera
Tried Aoc, Aion, EQII, RoM, Vindictus, Darkfail, DDO, GW, PotBS
Game shipped too early. EA didn't run out of money, they just decided to push it out of the door before it was ready.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Should take a loot at Global Agenda. They offer much more in terms of gameplay, and they scrapped subs.