APB's Realtime Worlds Files For Bankruptcy, US Office Closed

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Scott Jennings| 15 Comments

Or “enters administration“, as the Europeans put it.

More on the US office closure.

Job losses: over 170. A staff of 50 is kept on to maintain APB, most likely in preparation to sell it off to another company to cover debts.

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  • http://Website Matt Mihaly

    Ouch. Sorry to hear it. I’m way too familiar with exactly that happening.

  • http://Website Peter S.

    Oh jeez… so much for it being theoretical. Damn. :(

  • http://Website Freakazoid

    welp

  • http://Website Ironwood

    Administration is actually quite different from a formal liquidation. At this stage, though, I suspect we’re just splitting hairs.

    Bottom line; Nae Money.

  • http://- Angeldust
  • http://Website Thomas

    This game sure crashed & burned pretty fast. It seems like it just came out yesterday.

  • http://Website koro

    http://www.specialmove.com/_microsites/Activision

    “In light of recent developments within the Dundee games community, Activision Blizzard have partnered with Specialmove to host a recruitment event in Dundee on Thursday 19th and Friday 20th August at the Apex Hotel, City Quay, Dundee.”

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


    Ironwood:

    Administration is actually quite different from a formal liquidation. At this stage, though, I suspect we’re just splitting hairs.
    Bottom line; Nae Money.

    Just to be clear – going into administration under English (well, in this case Scottish) law is a lot more serious than a Chapter 11 bankruptcy under US law. US firms routinely go into chapter 11, restructure and then emerge to continue trading. Over here, if a firm goes into administration that’s pretty much it for them.

  • http://www.gawaintheblind.com GTB

    What bothers me the most about this is that future game developers will use this as an example of why not emulating WOW as much as possible is a bad idea, when really, it should be an example of why you should worry about cheating from day one rather than a nebulous “Some time in the future” if you are making a game built around pvp.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com/ geldonyetich

    If game developers should learn anything from APB, it’s that basing a game’s central gameplay mechanic on something that never worked particularly well, in this case GTA3-4′s gunplay mechanic, produces a poor product even if you dump 100 million dollars on it.

    As pertains to WoW, that’s a “hey, the game isn’t successful simply because they dumped a lot of money on it” lesson. No, money invested does not equal win when it comes to entertainment.

  • http://Website John Arras

    This is too bad. Crackdown was one of my favorite games on the 360. I can’t believe they couldn’t translate that fun to an MMO.

  • http://Website Mist

    It is fun. I sunk at least 300 hours into it between beta and release. It’s a fun game. It just has nowhere near enough content to charge monthly for it.

  • http://Website Joe


    Mist:

    It is fun. I sunk at least 300 hours into it between beta and release. It’s a fun game. It just has nowhere near enough content to charge monthly for it.

    This is the thing, though — CounterStrike is a lot more fun than your average WoW raid, but ‘fun’ isn’t really the metric by which we’ve been conditioned to decide paying for something monthly as a subscription is worthwhile.

    Levels and progression are. We’ve been conditioned to pay for the suck, even when it’s less fun.

  • http://Website Peter S.

    Thus the distinction between “fun” and “compelling”. See also: gambling.

  • http://Website Ironwood

    “The real purpose of beta is publicity, not bug fixing.”

    Whoops.