APB developer RealTime Worlds closing

Last week, rumors surfaced about RealTime World's financial woes. The company was said to be laying off the entire staff working on their freshly announced game MyWorld. Word just reached us that this was not enough to save the studio.

[Letros]

Ouch, good luck to those that need it.

[sack_boi]

Well, you can't expect people to pay a monthly fee for a GTA game

[SilentNegotiator]

They spent $50 million, one of the highest game budgets (#7, http://www.digitalbattle.co... ), on APB.

They should have known better than to spend all that on something that wasn't a sure thing.

Rest in Peace, RealTime.
I was REALLY hoping you'd make Crackdown 3.

[Baka-akaB]

they actually could charge for it , if it was any good . It's pretty and got cutomisations , but the gameplay is meh and repetitive ...
Might as well just have done Home or the 360 avatars

[Trunkz]

Their clothing is ok, customs on that is fine. Their hair tho, there's only 30 or something and many aren't too great.

I won't even go into the cheaters that ruin the game cause of lack of anti cheat. I wasted my money on this crap, but I still have my basic free hours that came with the game, I'm sure many more would be crapin themselves for having to pay for more hours.

They would of made it Free-2-Play upon purchase, then have it so if u want you can pay for extra stuff. Forcing people to pay for more hours made many steer away from this.

[Immortal321]

but I'm not, but I'm still piss on the fact that a developer studio flop big time.

[ingiomar]

Microsoft should acquire them

[NYC_Gamer]

terrible choices will ruin the studio

[Christopher]

Pretty much.

[Catharsis]

How could they not see it coming? They refused to listen to advice from the very beginning of beta stressing the need for basics like decent driving, shooting and being actually able to PLAY the game as a crim without cops being dispatched on you every other minute.

[jay2]

Beep, thats bad, I've been playing APB since the privet BETA and really enjoy the game, heartbreaking news for me,

[Apollyn]

The game itself is pretty bad yeah but its actually fun one of few games that really is fun and can just be pick up and play. Tis a shame tbh :(

[Spinal]

So much for the WoW killer...

Better luck next.....timeeee?.......oooh.. ...right.

[tdrules]

I'd be laid off too if I wasted $100m on a flop

[Akagi]

I doubt even a patch that fixed all problems with the game would save them. Sadly, people have totally written off this game and not looked back.

[BubbleSystemSuck]

First time a heard about APB

[Syaz1]

best of luck there. hope david jones' resume is still good enough to be accepted elsewhere. he was involved in creation of the gta franchise after all.

[DaBadGuy]

It's shame whenever you hear about a studio closing. Regardless of their decisions that led to the closing, it's still a shame that so many people are out of work.

[XactGamer]

Now maybe they will go back and make a better Crackdown 3

[SpoonyRedMage]

Dumb sh*ts spent 100 mil on one game. Nuff said.

[SHOGUN 36o]

Yeah like that has never happened before. Other games (GTA IV) have seen budgets that high or quite near it. Difference here is the 100 million was poorly spent.

http://www.industrygamers.c...

[writersblock]

I heard about the game about a month before it came out, got somewhat exited to see how it turns out. I completely forgot about up until now, which is saying something

Hear about it one month earlier, somewhat exited
Forget about it till you hear the studio went bankrupt because of it

[Thepro318]

someone will buy them remember free radical makers of HAZE their game flop. Went through hard times like realtimes got brought by crytek.

[Hades1337]

Should have stuck with Crackdown, at least they had the financial backing of Microsoft.

[BabyTownFrolics]

made crackdown 2 instead

[juggulator]

Oh well. Time to bring it to consoles as either free-to-play or 7.99 per month and you can use PSN or XBL cards to pay. Oh wait, that's what would have save the game in the first place.

I seriously can't believe they pulled the PC MMO card after barking about a possible console release and now look where they've ended up.

I think the may have had better sales putting it on all platforms for free. It's clear that not everyone was rushing out to get this game but they would be if it was available on their preferred console. They could have made back that 100mil. in a few weeks.

Many of you are thinking "an MMO for free?" I say this because look at MAG. The game falls firmly into the MMO category because of the sheer number of players the game supports which is 256. And its free. If I'm not mistaken I believe APB only supported 100 players on screen. I know there's the customization and all the other stuff in APB but all in all it's just GTA online. Anyone can enjoy that because all you have to do put GTAIV in and hop. online. They thought about the short term profits of a monthly subscription when they should have been thinking about about long term sales across all gaming platforms.

[dcbronco]

People always say that only good games matter. Not sales.

[Cajun Chicken]

Oh, my, god. Seriously. What a shame!

[Syaz1]

it would be ironic if the remaining staff ran to ruffian games lol.