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Source: Free Radical Locked Up
By Kris Graft
December 18, 2008
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"After the poor reviews of Haze and subsequent loss of a contract with LucasArts, [Free Radical was] struggling to find publishers to back the long-awaited TimeSplitters 4 and other smaller projects and were left with no choice but to pull the plug."
A source close to staff at Free Radical Design told Edge on Thursday that the developer has shut its doors--and changed the locks--just before the Christmas holiday.
"Staff arrived for work this morning to find the locks had been changed and notices on the doors advising them to attend a meeting at a nearby Novotel [a hotel chain] at 12 noon today," said the source, who preferred anonymity and worked with Free Radical in better times. "Heavy duty security staff was patrolling the buildings."
"...I think they're all a bit shell-shocked."
The studio employed around 150-200 staff, the tipster said. "After the poor reviews of Haze and subsequent loss of a contract with LucasArts, [Free Radical was] struggling to find publishers to back the long-awaited TimeSplitters 4 and other smaller projects and were left with no choice but to pull the plug."
Free Radical was founded in 1999 by former Rare developers including David Doak, Steve Ellis, Graeme Norgate and Karl Hilton, who created games including Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark. Free Radical also created the aforementioned TimeSplitters series of games.
The independent studio had a publishing deal with LucasArts on the unannounced Star Wars Battlefront III, a deal that fell through in October after about two years of development, the source said. "[Free Radical] was relying on Lucas for further contracts which had been promised in some sort of exclusivity deal. Obviously that all went down the pan."
Perhaps the worst news for fans of the studio is the demise of TimeSplitters 4. "They had already started working on TimeSplitters 4, and had been for over a year, but due to the failure of Haze and the deal falling through with Lucas, they couldn't get a publisher to back them. They had a last ditch attempt last week down South somewhere, but it came to nothing so I think that was the last hope."
The source claimed that the company "didn't treat their staff well at all." Rumors of a closure were circulating within the company for "a few weeks."
"People have been leaving in droves due to lack of security, poor treatment of staff, better offers and guaranteed work from other local developers such as Monumental Games and one in Derby whose name escapes me [Rebellion and Core Design both have Derby locations--ed.]."
Doak reportedly "officially" left the company early this month, and Ellis has set up another company called Pumpkin Beach, which already has a placeholder website registered under his name. The two are reportedly working on this project together and will "hand pick" Free Radical staff to join them. [2/11/09: Crytek, who has since bought FRD, has since confirmed that Ellis stayted on board.]
The source also said that despite the looming closure, the company still held a big Christmas party last week and gave staff a week's pay as a Christmas bonus.
Attempts to contact Free Radical have been unsuccessful.
After the meeting
Later on Thursday, our source updated us with more inside information from the Free Radical staff meeting that took place at a hotel near the studio. Apparently, Free Radical knew the urgency of its situation six months ago.
Co-founder Ellis was "visibly upset" when he talked to the staff, the source said. "[He] told staff how very sorry he was and they'd been doing all they could, working flat-out to either find a publisher or a buyer over the past six months, but no offers were made. There have been several visits to the States, but to no avail."
About 20 staff members were offered positions, possibly with Ellis' new venture, Pumpkin Beach, although this is yet to be confirmed. The rest of the employees were told in a separate room that they would be laid off.
Staff had reportedly been paid to the end of December, but are not expected to receive any further compensation "as there was nothing left to give."
Reps from U.K. game makers Codemasters and Monumental Games were at the hotel after the meeting asking for CVs and applications from former Free Radical staffers.
Update: Added meeting notes.
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Pumpkin Beach, although this is yet to be confirmed. The rest of the employees were told in a separate room that they would be laid off. http://www.crazypurchase.com
Fact is though if Rebellion hadn't been in "secret" talks with Lucas over Star Wars Battlefront 3 for the PS3 and X-Box 360 (Rebellion had the PsP and the PS2) then Lucas wouldn't have pulled the plug on their Star Wars game. This MUST have had an effect.
Using Free Radicals assets and the Rebellion SW team being "sworn to secrecy" - it was only a matter of time before the "UK's biggest independent developer" (sic) managed to wangle themselves the licence for the Ps3 and X-Box 360 versions.
Problem was - time and the insane deal they did to "get" the game away from FR.
All the time FR thought things were fine Rebellion were there in the background...waiting and promising a better deal.
Eventually Lucas struck the deal (December 08) to work the game.
The SW team being given the wonderful news of creating a PS 3 version of the game to add to their PsP and PS2....which sucked big time for the dev team.
Ahhh Rebellion...don't you just love 'em?
Lets NOT mention what happened on The Simpson's' Game.........
Just yet...
Having been through a few redundancies myself, I really do empathise with the employees involved here; it's a shit situation, no doubt made worse by the economic climate generally, and it being at Christmas too.
However, I'm not too surprised. Goldeneye was great, likewise the Timesplitters series and Second Sight wasn't half-bad either.
But, what have they been doing for the last 3 years? Haze! And that is one truly awful game.
As they say, the proof's in the pudding, and I'm not surprised to hear from this Edge source that they weren't too great on their employees of late (mind you, it's sadly a rare thing for a British company to be good to their staff these days).
If you're employed by a company that is badly organised (and security-lax), and treats you like crap, then I can understand why you're not going to be very motivated to put your all into the finished product (i.e. Haze). Let's face it, even if you did manage to sift through and fix the majority of the huge number of bugs in the game, it would still have been somewhat underwhelming anyhow. Couple this with the fact that great (or even good) games on the PS3 are a little thin on the ground, then it should have been rather easy to make Haze moderately successful.
Furthermore, given that they'd had such a good pedigree of decent FPS's, it's no big surprise to me that they've ceased to be. Bearing all this mind, no amount of government funding/assistance could possibly have helped them, and indeed, I'd have been pretty annoyed (as a taxpayer) if the government had!
So, commiserations for the staff; I really do hope you all find employment, and quickly. But to the guys at the top ... well, maybe you ought to take a long, hard look at yourselves (and your work) before you go starting up afresh.
Terrible news. And a real shame about Timesplitters 4. Love TS2.
Wow. One crappy game, and down they go. I still play Time Splitters 2 from time to time...
This is a great shame. But once again highlights the lack of financial aid given to the games industry by the British government. I know that, no matter how many tax breaks any government can hand out wont keep a buisness who are not breaking even afloat, it could of how ever given them more time to find a buyer/publisher.
That whole company are the best people u would ever wanna work with!
such a shock "still cant beleive it"
Yeah I rented HAZE and sad to say it all around sucked bad gameplay , graphics , and terrible collision detection bugs were everywhere sad to say the worst game Ive played on PS3.
shit, what a way to ring in the new year.
i've known a few people who've been fired (from 6-figure salary jobs) just prior to the holidays. they all told me the same thing; one of the worst experiences they've ever had and money had nothing to do with it.
Sad to see nothing utlimately came from the team that made goldeneye that is on par with goldeneye...
That was their problem, they played that card for too long and raised peoples hope. The only original memeber of the GoldenEye team at FRD was Karl Hilton.
Norgate did SOME of the music along with Kirkhope.
Stephen Ellis joined fairly late and worked mostly on the multiplayer .
Doak did a lot of the AI setups/scripting on levels which as far as I recall were aleady built by Karl who ok did a great job, but Hollis and Mark Edmonds (Edmonds being the biggest unsung hero and none of you know who he is. Well almost none of you.) were also major players in the game, as were Bea Jones for doing the Mo-Cap, which was one of the games best features. Nobody knows what poor old "and Duncan" did so I shall continue that tradition!!
The basics of what made goldeneye great were in there for a VERY longtime. It just needed pulling together.
I'm not trying to discredit the team, but I'm simply saying, you can't look at FRD and think that they're going to live up to GE. Nothing will top GE ever on a console because it was so far ahead of its time and at a time when fundametal gains/mechanics/principles were ripe for picking and more importantly the public was a lot easier to please. Oh and it helped having a James Bond universe.
GE was a great game that stemmed from many factors which did not make the transition to FRD or anywhere else. It faded away with Perfect Dark 64. As did Rarewhere?
Sad news. I wonder how many other dev's will get burned for heavily backing the ps3.
Haze would be a flop in XBox too. The problem was not the PS3, was Haze it self.
No doubt about that, sorry to see a game company close.