After a plethora of rumours that came in this morning, it seems like Free Radical Desgin, the creators of the Timesplitters and Battlefront franchises (and err, Haze) may well be shutting it’s doors. The rumours stated that the UK-based developing house were shutting down have since been somewhat negated after Cameron Gunn of Resolve Partners – the company that Free Radical was into administration with – has issued a statement…stating:
“We will be spending the next three or four days assessing the financial position of the company but it’s business as usual, although we have asked that almost all of the employees apart from a skeleton crew remain at home… All employees have been paid up until the end of December and we hope to make another announcement before Christmas or very soon thereafter, but we must stress at this stage that it’s business as usual.”
Hmm, it doesn’t exactly sound too good if most of their employees have been sent home even though it’s ‘business as usual’. It may also be interesting to note that Free Radical Design no longer has the rights contract with LucasArts for the Star Wars: Battlefront series as it has since been handed of to Rebellion, who managed the PSP port of Battlefront II.
Best of luck to everyone working at Free Radical. Keep that British stiff upper lip nice and…stiff.
[Update] It seems that Free Radical design has now officially closed down citing publisher problems due to the failure of Haze and the aforementioned ‘non-deal’ with LucasArts. ‘This is Nottingham’ has confirmed with Cameron Gunn of Resolve Partners, that Free Radical has been
“placed in to administration yesterday afternoon. [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. 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.”
Free Radical employed about 185 full time staff who will all now be jobless over Christmas. On the bright side, at least they were paid for the whole of December.
