Realtime Worlds enters administration with 170 jobs lost
Dundee-based video games developer Realtime Worlds has been placed into administration, resulting in 170 job losses being made by the APB developer.
The company has spent years working on its latest online project, APB, and not long after its release has announced job losses and that it will have to move others to provide support for the game following a 30 day consultation period.
The company was continuing to work on its next title, My World – an online social networking game when it was closed earlier today.
Blame for the closure has been laid at the lackluster performance of APB upon its recent release which the company had high hopes for and promoted heavily during development.
Writing in the comments section of video games website Rock, Paper Shotgun last week, the former employee criticised the business strategy of the company, indicating that it centred too much of its plans around the development of APB.
“The problem was that management looked at the revenue they wanted to generate and priced accordingly, failing to realise (or care) that there are literally a dozen top quality, subscription free team based shooters. Many of which, now, have progression and persistence of some sort – for free,” explained the employee.
“They also failed spectacularly to manage expectations. When Dave J spoke out saying there would ‘not be a standard subscription model’, he unwittingly set expectations at ‘free to play’. When it’s announced that we’re essentially pay-per-hour, we get absolutely killed in the press, somewhat understandably,” they added, before commenting that they believed that the announcement of the game was made ‘too early.’
“The sheer time spent and money it took to make APB is really a product of fairly directionless creative leadership. Certainly Dave J has great, strong, ambitious ideas for his games. But he’s a big believer in letting the details emerge along the way, rather than being planned out beyond even a rudimentary form. For most of the lifetime of APB, he was also CEO of the whole company, as well as Creative Director,” they continued.
They added that My World was ‘genuinely groundbreaking’ and said that the senior management team must take responsibility for the problems that the company now faces.
Ken Pattullo and Paul Dounis of Begbies Traynor have been appointed joint administrators.