Founded in 2002 by Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings designer David Jones, Realtime became the largest independent game developer in Scotland after the surprise success of its first title, Crackdown. As it began work on its second game, APB, the studio grew to more than 200 employees and added an office in Boulder, Colorado.
The studio had high hopes for APB, with Jones going on record in 2008 stating the subscription-based PC game could generate "hundreds of millions" in revenue. But the game's anticipated June release was a critical dud (58 on Metacritic) and a subsequent commercial disappointment.
A week after the game was released, Realtime announced it would be restructuring to fully support the game, laying off an undisclosed number of employees.
Yesterday, the company pulled its three and six month APB subscription options from the game's web site, and today word of further layoffs at the company kicked off speculation the game, and the studio were doomed. Not so, Realtime said in a statement.
"Further to the press release issued on the 7th July announcing the post-launch restructure for APB and expected redundancies, the 30-day consultation period with the affected staff has ended," the company stated.
"The supporting infrastructure for a game inevitably changes once released, and those staff that couldn't be redeployed to new projects in the Art, Audio, Coding, Design, Production, and QA departments have regrettably been made redundant."
Realtime Worlds also said an announcement about the pricing structure for APB is coming soon.
Sharkey says: Everyone had such high hopes for APB, I wonder if that played a part in its dismal critical reception. Regardless, the company made a massive investment in the game, and they won't simply give up on it after a month. With its low number of subscribers, though, I can't help but think the company will try to incorporate a free-to-play model before long.
