Reports around the net, ones later confirmed by Rage themselves, over the last few weeks have said that Rage could soon be closing down.
This morning, Rage issued a statement that revealed that the company has failed to achieve a sale due to the time frame needed to settle legal issues revolving around the transfer of its various intellectual property rights. Due to the aforementioned problems, Rage"s four studios have closed down and all but 17 of its staff is still around.
- Hunter Kelly said: "This is a highly regrettable situation and it is obviously extremely disappointing for all concerned that the legal risks could not be overcome sufficiently to achieve the sales of all or parts of the business as going concerns.
``Despite the considerable interest we received in the business and our continued efforts to progress this, we were faced with increasing complications posed by the number of licence holders and owners of intellectual property contained within the games which made it illegal to hand over or give access to the information to interested parties
. These were such that not only were they impossible to overcome within the necessary timescale to keep the business trading, but there was also no guarantee that these issues could actually be resolved to meet the terms of the offers being made, and there was the danger that the proposed sales would have resulted in a net loss to the company and its creditors."