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.
Sony’s European division has uploaded a new batch of content to the Playstation Store in conjunction with Playstation Day, a press event in London where lucky gamers are sampling the likes of Resistance 2, Killzone 2 and Socom.
