Realtime Worlds, developers of Crackdown and the recent cops and robbers MMO APB (All Points Bulletin), have entered into administration. Just last month the developer laid off about 60 people of their 250+ workforce. UK-based corporate recovery group Begbies Traynor, have been confirmed to be handling the business recovery, and they are hoping to find someone willing to take over the business and carry on the support and development of APB.
APB had a very costly, and long development, but was met with lukewarm reviews and was never really taken to heart by gamers when it launched earlier this summer.
TIGA, the UK trade organisation had the following to say:
Dr Richard Wilson, CEO of TIGA:
"This is a very sad day for Realtime Worlds, Dundee and for the Scottish and UK video games industry. Realtime Worlds is a fantastic company with an exceptionally talented team, management and board of directors. On behalf of the video games industry, TIGA would like to express its condolences to everyone at Realtime Worlds. We wish you the best of luck for the future.
"Despite today's terrible news, Dundee and Scotland remain good places to do games business. Scotland has some excellent universities and offers large numbers of extremely talented programmers, artists, producers, managers, designers, audio engineers and testers. TIGA, the trade association representing the UK games industry, will do everything in its power to champion and support the sector."