Radical Entertainment shut down
Radical Entertainment, best known for the Prototype series, has been shut down.
Radical Entertainment, best known for the Prototype series, has been shut down. Rob Bridgett, former audio designer of the studio, confirmed the closure on Twitter with a concise message: RIP Radical Entertainment 1991-2012.
Radical Entertainment was a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision. And apparently, the sluggish sales of Prototype 2 are to blame. Although it topped NPD sales during its month of release, it managed to sell fewer than 250K copies.
Activision explained to Shacknews their decision to close the studio:
Although we made a substantial investment in the Prototype IP, it did not find a broad commercial audience. Radical is a very talented team of developers, however, we have explored various options for the studio, including a potential sale of the business, and have made a difficult conclusion through the consultation process that the only remaining option is a significant reduction in staff. As such, some employees will remain working for Radical Entertainment supporting other existing Activision Publishing projects, but the studio will cease development of its own games going forward.
Although the team has been largely gutted, the PC release of Prototype 2 will still release on time. As per Radical's Facebook page: "For PC gamers, rest assured that the PC version of Prototype 2 is still going to launch on July 24th as planned."
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Shacknews
replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Radical Entertainment shut down.
Radical Entertainment, best known for the Prototype series, has been shut down.-
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Yeah, that's not an industry specific practice.
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It's a common thing for companies in the game industry to do. This isn't the first time that it's happened.
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Just saying that doing that sort of thing for mass layoffs isn't only done in games.
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It's not the layoffs, but simply locking them in a room or locking them outside of the building while doing it :P Pretty shady stuff.
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That happens in a lot of companies. It's standard practice in the US for technology companies.
Mine just did that a year ago when they fired off the R&D staff here. -
No this isn't shady at all even in other industries so employees don't walk out with sensitive information, assets, or whatnot.
There's an example of this in Mad Men when someone got laid off but no one took the steps to keep him from trashing the place and taking his client contact information with him.
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More like ~any big company~
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That's better than what Sigil did to their employees. Asking all of them to meet outside, locked them out of the building and had security get their things. Talk about fucked up.
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How can you treat your employers like that :/
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That's the one
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What will they do if the employee just grabs his shit and leaves? Fire him?
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Nothing unless he grabs something that isn't his.
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No consequences, as far as I can tell, especially if you're a temp. A few years ago, I got up and walked out in the middle of the QA manager's goodbye spiel and slammed the door behind me. Maybe not the most tasteful action to take, but they didn't exactly go running after me or anything.
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You can leave if you get up and walk out, however, they may decide to not give you a severance package then. Of course if everyone just walked out they would pretty much have to still give severance packages.
I mean what are they going to do? Fight you? Call the police? "A man we were holding prisoner walked out of the building! Find and Arrest him!" -
Sometimes the differences between scandinavian and american business practices are enormous. No employer could do that to you here, thank god for socialism I guess.
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Yeah. I often cringe when I read about work places and policies on the Shack. A large part of the stuff that seems to go on over the seas would get a company in a shitload of trouble in Finland. I don't care what political views one attaches them to, I quite like my rights that ensure that I can't be fucked over without almost any notice and make sure that I can't be locked in a room... or well, I can, but as said, that would be a bad, bad idea over here. Also I keep reading about these horrible bosses who abuse their power however they please, and people seem to think "that's just the way it goes". During my 15 year career I've never, not even once, had a superior who talked down to me, yelled at me or abused his or her position in any way inappropriate. Pulling shit like that will get you in a position that you don't want to be in, at least in the type of work cultures I've been involved in. Most of the bosses I've had I'd classify as friends.
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I had one boss that gave me trouble once, but that stopped quickly after I contacted the ombudsman and my labor union. In the US it seems like the fabric of society would unravel if you unionized or something. And the few unions they have are more like mafia, according to my researches of The Wire.
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not surprising but sad. They had two titles canceled over the past two years, including a Crash Bandicoot remake.
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I'll always remember them for Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.
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No kidding. Used to be tons here, now they are dropping like flies.
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This is a list from 2 years ago. http://www.techvibes.com/blog/10-biggest-video-game-developers-in-vancouver-in-2010 the landscape has changed a fair bit.
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http://www.techvibes.com/blog/10-biggest-video-game-developers-in-vancouver-in-2010 that was a list from 2 years ago.
More recent article: "A quick scan of the Top 10 employers reveals a little more information that could be called a trend. Two of the companies - Capcom and United Front - report that they have grown in the past year whereas five companies - THQ, Slant Six, Next Level, Rockstar, and Ubisoft - have seen headcount shrink."
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/is-the-video-game-industry-in-trouble-in-british-columbia-2012-01-23/-
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Oh, so you know all teams and all positions in the industry? *rolls eyes*
Perhaps I wasn't communicated what I meant properly. I meant positions that don't hit crunch time by the same magnitude as those working on the product. More stable in terms of work and hours over time. I know this exists because a friend of mine works for EA and this is how it is for him. Sounds like they are rare positions, though.-
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Free money in Montreal and Toronto are succeeding at Vancouver's expensive =\
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They are accountable to their share holders which want to see record profits each quarter. In that kind of situation you only care about making money at the right time to make each quarter look good. Share holders don't want to hear about people waiting to buy games later at probably a discounted price.
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SHIT! :( I hate this sort of news feels like a part of me just died each time a studio I like and have played their games is dissolved.
Man I have been waiting for Prototype 2 for the PC I hope it still comes out, still on Steam.
Odd in April there was not many massive releases so the window was good, wonder what happened.
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Yeah this is true, well thing is a really like P1 and I have been really looking forward to 2 so as long as I can play that's all I care.
Even if there are hick ups you can use other apps to mend them, sure this sucks and is wrong but there usually is a way.
I hope things will be find though :(
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Companies like this closing are a sign of the dying times.... games cost so much more to develop now but they still dont cost enough to keep these companies up..... thats too bad
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so no PC port of Prototype 2 then?
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http://store.steampowered.com/app/115320/ just pre ordered it worked fine. I am sure they are done it by now, should be fine.
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Steve jobs wrote in his final will that he demanded Radical Entertainment to be shut down. Apparently the entire development team slept with his dog.
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Did you see what the dog was wearing though? Totally was asking for it.
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Long time coming, it was suprising Prototype 2 even was made. They cut most of the studio years and ago and just by chance that Prototype sold enough for them to hire a few people to make a sequel.
Not surprising, but feel bad because it was a cool company once. RIP Vancouver games industry. -
I don't see this as an entirely bad thing. Creatively, Activision seems like a poisoned company. They are maximizing profit to fewer and fewer products with fewer employees. They are the Call of Duty company plus Blizzard. While this might not seem like a bad thing business wise but we all know at some point that WOW money will stop coming in and Call of Duty will stop selling.
As for Radical, pretty much all the employees will be grabbed by someone else shortly. There are bunches are new companies forming and established companies are hiring, gearing up for the next generation. As much as it sucks to lose their job and have to relocate maybe, Just being away from Activision might be worth it for the developers and game consumers. -
Too bad, I really like that series.
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They would have survived i think if they retained the incredible hulk name and would have sold more units. Compared to ultimate destruction I just couldn't get into the prototype games as the character and story just didn't interest me. It's a real shame because i really would have liked a ultimate destruction 2.
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