ION Storm Dallas Closing Down

May 31, 2001 5:49 AM

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According to very reliable sources close to ION Storm, ION Storm Dallas is shutting down today. Eidos apparently didn't feel like spending more money on the game development company of John Romero and Tom Hall. However much fun was made of the company and some of its products, it's never cool to see people lose their job. ION Storm Austin will continue to develop Thief 3, Deus Ex 2 and whatever other products they have going there.
So what has happened to Anachronox? It is currently in duplication, so it's 'done' but right now we don't really know in what kind of state the final version is that ION delivered to Eidos. Seeing how it was supposed to be done really soon anyway, hopefully it will be playable out of the box. This is also why Anachronox wasn't at E3, the team choose to take all the time it could get to finish the game. We hope to get some comments from (former) ION Storm employees soon.
Update: We are aware of sites trying to dispute the story. We stand by it. Look for Eidos to put some PR spin to it though.

Update 2: Some more info, since more people have been emailing us now (thanks for the all "it's not true fuckface" emails too). According to one of the emails, Eidos financials are a big part of the decision to shut down ION Dallas (see this story for the great first quarter results) and shove out Anachronox since Eidos isn't sure of a hit like with Deus Ex 2 or Thief 3. But the good news is Anachronox is apparently running great with the team having worked day and night for the past 2 weeks to make it perfect (though of course not as perfect if they hadn't been for the finish-or-die deadline), so it won't be some shovelware product, which would've been an incredible shame.