Developers at Free Radical, creators of the Timesplitters franchise and the recent critical bomb HAZE, turned up to work yesterday to find the locks changed at the Nottingham-based studio, guards patrolling the offices and a note telling employees to return home and attend a meeting later that day.
Cameron Gunn, a spokesperson for Resolve Partners, told ThisIsNottingham: “The company was placed in to administration yesterday afternoon.” The studio is located in Bostocks Lane, Sandiacre and was formally the employer for 185 professionals.
“We will be spending the next three or four days assessing the financial position of the company but it’s business as usual, although we have asked that almost all of the employees apart from a skeleton crew remain at home.”
“All employees have been paid up until the end of December and we hope to make another announcement before Christmas or very soon thereafter, but we must stress at this stage that it’s business as usual.”
Supposedly the final say on the company’s future will be decided before 2009.
HAZE’s poor critical reception and lack-lustre sales was the final nail in the company’s coffin, after it previously lost a deal to develop a LucasArts property and failed to find a publisher for TimeSplitters 4.
The company garnered an instant fanbase as several of the employees, such as David Doak, Steve Ellis, Karl Hilton, Graeme Norgate and Lee Ray, worked at Rare on the fan-favourite Goldenye 007. Co-founders Dave Doak and Steve Ellis are rumoured to be starting their own firm.
The UK Based Independent Games Developers Association (TIGA) issued a statement to “say how sorry the whole industry is to hear of the fate of Free Radical Design”. The association urged the UK Government to “establish a more favourable tax environment and tackle the underlying skills shortages facing the industry”, to help avoid situations like this in the future.
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It would be tragic if Free Radical were to close so I hope somebody swoops in and buys them. If all games developers died after producing just one bad game then there wouldn’t be any left.
Free Radical clearly have a wealth of talent… its seems assured they will be snapped up… hopefully without too many job losses.
Rumours support that Dave Doak and Steve Ellis’ new firm might be cherry picking some Free Radical talent, and EDGE reports that there is “Significant Interest” Shown in Buying Free Radical.
http://www.edge-online.com/news/%E2%80%9Csignificant-interest%E2%80%9D-shown-buying-free-radical
Although, “well over 100” people have already left the group.
Whatever happens, its always sad to see UK talent get tortured like this, especially around Christmas
Sad news, and a huge blow to the UK games industry.
I spent so much time playing the Timesplitters series in multiplayer: probably my last memories of traditional multiplayer instead of the online stuff come from those very games.
I hope the guys who where working on TS4 stick together and get given the chance finish the title under new owner.
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