The Vancouver-based game developer Radical Entertainment has been hit by massive layoffs ordered by its owners at Activision. The team, best known for their open world action games such as the Prototype series, apparently was done in by poor sales of its latest effort, Prototype 2, which was released for consoles in late April and is supposed to be coming out for the PC in late July.
In a statement sent to Kotaku, Activision said:
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.
Radical was formed in 1991 and made a ton of games for various publishers and platforms, including the PC. in 2005, Radical was acquired by Vivendi Games and made acclaimed open world titles such as The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and Scarface: The World is Yours. It had started work on the first game in the Prototype series before Vivendi Games was merged with Activision in 2008. Prototype was released in 2009 and was a solid hit but apparently that was not the case for the sequel.
There"s no word if today"s decision means that the announced PC version of Prototype 2 will be cancelled. Update: Radical"s Facebook page confirms the PC port will be coming out on July 24th as planned.
Source: Kotaku