Development
On 11 December 2006, New Enterprise Associates announced an investment of US$30 million into Realtime Worlds. [8]
Their first release under the name Realtime Worlds was the critically acclaimed 2007 action-adventure third-person sandbox game Crackdown , an Xbox 360 exclusive title. [4] In 2010, they released a massively multiplayer online game for Microsoft Windows, titled APB (All Points Bulletin) , which had been in development for five years, and was hoped to generate upwards of "hundreds of millions of pounds". [9]
In 2007, at Develop magazine's Industry Excellence Awards, the company was nominated in a record-breaking seven categories, and took home the awards for Innovation and New UK/European Studio. Company chairman Ian Hetherington was also crowned Development Legend. [10] At the 2007 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Video Game Awards ceremony, Crackdown was nominated in five categories and won two, for Action and Adventure and Use of Audio. [11] In 2008, Crackdown was honored as Best Debut by the GDC's Game Developers Choice awards. [12]
On 14 February 2008, it was announced that Realtime Worlds had secured $50M in funding from a consortium led by venture capitalists Maverick Capital and New Enterprise Associates and joined by the WPP Group, a London-based advertising firm. The funds are expected to be used for "continued expansion". [4]
On 27 April 2009, Gary Dale left his COO position at Take-Two Interactive to become CEO of the company. Dave Jones stepped down as CEO of the company and took on the title of creative director. [13]
On 1 May 2010, Realtime Worlds annual accounts revealed a further $21M investment was made in the company in January 2010. [14] This brings the total investment in Realtime Worlds since 2006 to $101M.
On 29 June 2010, after five years of development, with lengthy delays, APB was released to the general public. As of 15 July 2010, APB had a metacritic score of 58 out of 100. On 7 July 2010, Realtime Worlds announced that it was to restructure its work force to focus more on providing "total support" for APB. [15]
On 16 September 2010, Realtime Worlds announced that it would be shutting down APB's servers for good. [16]
Administration and closure
On 17 August 2010, six weeks after the release of APB , Realtime Worlds entered administration with Begbies Traynor, announcing major layoffs to their Dundee division, and mostly closing their Colorado office. [17] References state that 50 employees would be held to maintain the game APB All Points Bulletin, though it was unclear to what extent. [18] [19] [20] [21] Joint administration was conducted by Paul Dounis and Ken Pattullo of the Begbies Traynor Group. [21]
Dounis stated: "Our intention is to continue trading the company while we attempt to find a going concern buyer which will safeguard the future of the business." [21] The following day (18 August), Begbies Traynor announced that Realtime Worlds had attracted interest from potential buyers "from both sides of the Atlantic." [22] On 19 August, Begbies Traynor confirmed that a buyer needed to be found for the company as a going concern by the end of September. [23] If that deadline was not achieved, liquidation was the most likely option for Realtime Worlds.
On 16 September 2010, the remainder of the Realtime Worlds staff was laid off with a temporary skeleton crew left in place to close the offices in Dundee and Colorado. [24]
On 12 November 2010, bidding on thousands of Realtime Worlds lots ended, with industrial auctioneer Sweeney Kincaid managing the sales and collections. The lots included monitors, computers and games consoles. [25]
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