Team Bondi has sold its assets and IP, and told its staff to choose between jobs with the buyer or severance terms, according to reports, with a source claiming the LA Noire developer has "gone bankrupt."
A Develop source, described as "an insider who engages with both companies locally", claims that game-related IP and other assets have been sold to Australian production studio Kennedy Miller Mitchell. The company, owned by Mad Max director George Miller, had previously been rumoured to be in talks to acquire the Sydney-based developer.
The source claims that all Team Bondi staff have been offered jobs at KMM, and controversial studio head Brendan McNamara has told them the alternative is redundancy. This has resulted in growing speculation that the studio has either gone bankrupt or been acquired outright by KMM.
McNamara was last week reported to have taken a tour of the KMM offices, with a source telling Kotaku: "The word is going round that Team Bondi is being folded into KMM. Team Bondi is pretty much doomed after the [crunch] scandal and can't find any new supporters."
LA Noire was some seven years in the making, and upon its release in May set a new UK chart record. Publisher Take-Two announced yesterday that it had shipped more than 4 million copies of the game, but its developer has been dogged by controversy since its release.
First, more than 100 developers who had worked on the game complained that they were omitted from the game's credits. Then, 11 employees laid bare the studio's working conditions, complaining of excessive unpaid overtime and a thoroughly unsympathetic employer. One said: "I was told that I was taking the piss by saying that I couldn't give every single one of my weekends away."
McNamara dismissed the complaints, saying he was "not in any way upset or disappointed by what I've done." But it was reported last month that Rockstar had tired of McNamara's management style, and severed ties with the studio, leaving it without a publisher.
Source: Develop
Comments
2Assuming that the stories of McNamara's "style" of management are true, this is truly karma biting him in the posterior. I am really sorry for the people who went to KMM to escape him and now are going to be working with him again (albeit we do not know in what capacity yet). Credits are cheap, motivating your team instead of tearing them down, and playing the politician rather than the maverick would have gone a long way. There are times and places for egos, but this was not one of them and now everyone suffers for it.
Seems fair. I was hoping for a big expansion for LA Noire, with a couple of extra desks or something. Along the lines of undead nightmare thing rockstar did. Guess that won't happen now.