APB Hit With Layoffs

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Scott Jennings| 21 Comments

After rumors that RealTime Worlds, the developer, had run out of funding, over 60 people have been let go amid talk of trying to sell off APB.

This entry was posted in Industry. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com geldonyetich

    Well, then, looks like they won’t be trying to fix it.  Goose that lays a golden egg: aborted.

  • http://Website Joe

    Huh?  APB seemed to have done well at launch, from what little I saw of it.
    Somebody update me here: What’s the deal?

  • http://Website Irenor

    Ah a bit sad. They made a lot of bad decisions concerning the payment model, etc. Even Global Agenda isn’t doing “that” well, but does seem to work better than APB.

  • http://Website Joe

    Link is failing for me bee-tee-dubs.

  • http://Website Octopaganini

    If they can’t get Grand Theft Auto Online to generate subs, why do Pachter and Kotick think Call of Duty Online can easily do it? Greed Goggles sure do shut out a whole lot of reality lurking in the peripheral vision.

  • http://twitter.com/Scahrossar Belsameth

    If only it was GTA:O, it isn’t tho and is actually rather bad.

  • http://Website Freakazoid

    Too bad. I liked the character creator, but that’s about it. I had hoped in another year the price would drop and I’d give it a shot. Looks like maybe it’ll happen sooner than later, if the servers don’t also drop.

  • http://www.facebook.com/dana.baldwin Dana V. Baldwin

    They spent one hundred million dollars. ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS! It’s fecking MMO GTA only years later. You’ve got what a 3month player retention window. WTF were these guys thinking!
    If you ever have that kinda money to spend, don’t. Spend a tenth of it and build something that can content grow over time. You’ll probably make it.

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    The entire concept of an APB game NOT being a state-of-the-art arcade cabinet with a chronically ill-tuned steering wheel, floppy shifter and seat-to-pedal distance that only LeBron could appreciate is pure madness from the git-go.
     
    Given that EA was founded at the dawn of what the modern nerd would probably consider the “good ol’ days” you’d think they’d do better at nostalgia.

  • http://Website Mist

    I thought the game was good, for the first month.
    The game actually has excellent gameplay all around, considering it combines both driving and fairly strategic (read: camper heaven) shooting aspects.
    It just has absolutely close to 0 content.

  • http://Website aragul

    http://na.apb.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1512425#post1512425
    Toxico said: “APB isn”t going anywhere. Don”t listen to gossip and hear say. Yes a number of staff members have unfortunately left that company but they were the guys working on MyWorld. Not APB.

    The APB team is still hard at work improving the game you guys are here for. “

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com geldonyetich

    I suppose the headline should be along the lines of, “RealTime Worlds performs mass layoff of product nobody knew existed.  Everybody figures unrelated 100 million dollar game made by same company is now in jeopardy.  Whoops!”

  • http://Website mcl

    Any trouble APB has in retention they can thank PunkBuster.
     
    DamnedCheater.com’s PunkBuster-Buster skills beat PB hands down. PB didn’t work and PB’s ineffectual milling about created server lag.  RTW shut down PB for the above two reasons leaving the place a den of aimbotters.
     
    I really enjoyed the game but won’t double subscribe, to RTW and DamnedCheaters, just to be competitive in it.

  • http://Website mcl
  • http://unsubject.wordpress.com UnSubject

    When a studio cancels their next project so they can focus on keeping the doors open, you can be sure that the original product isn’t doing well.

    Of course RTW is going to say, “Everything’s fine! We fired a bunch of people! Nothing’s changed!”. It’s standard practise. Why, just the other day I got an email from FireSky / Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment with great news on how Stargate: Resistance is getting updates and how Stargate: Worlds is likely to get some news on it shortly. The second you say you are finished publicly, you are.

  • http://Website Iconic

    I played the APB demo and while the game looks absolutely gorgeous with a ton of customization and cool options, it was also clunky as hell.  Driving a vehicle was painful.   I didn’t really get the point of it, or the pricing structure.
    Did they really spend 100 million dollars on it?  That would make it the most expensive MMO ever to date.

  • http://tremayneslaw.wordpress.com/ Tremayne

    Rumour has it that Tabula Rasa spent 100 million dollars to get out the door as well. I can only hope that APB is doing better than that game did …

  • http://Website Aufero

    I’ve seen two “official” figures for APB’s development costs – $50 million and $30 million.  (And the higher figure wasn’t sourced, which makes me suspect someone pulled it out of thin air.) While either one is still huge, that puts it well below several single player games.  (including GTA4, amusingly)

  • http://rog.gameslate.com/ Rog


    Belsameth:

    If only it was GTA:O, it isn’t tho and is actually rather bad.


    Aufero:

    I’ve seen two “official” figures for APB’s development costs – $50 million and $30 million.  (And the higher figure wasn’t sourced, which makes me suspect someone pulled it out of thin air.) While either one is still huge, that puts it well below several single player games.  (including GTA4, amusingly)

  • http://rog.gameslate.com/ Rog

    Eeep, clicked on a quote, nothing seemed to happen, clicked another– moved on to just writing an unrelated comment and *boom* it inserted both quotes. D’oh.
     
     
     

  • http://Website Imp

    I Beta’d APB up until near launch; it didn’t have nearly enough content or game play variety to justify a subscription IMO.

    Plus it had serious balance issues (when I played at least). I had great customization, that was the biggest appeal, but that hardly warrants a subscription.

    Most 1st person shooters have substantially more content then APB had/has.

    Both Saints Row 2 and GTA4 have infinitely more content then APB.

    Seems to me, if you’re going to launch a P2P MMO, you might want a bit more content then your typical single player game. You don’t want substantially LESS.