It’s hard to say what’s worse: Closing a developer not long after they’ve put out a new game or significantly reducing their staff to the point where they only serve to help with projects headed by other studios. Either way, Radical Entertainment — the folks behind the Prototype franchise — will no longer have work on games of their own. As of yesterday, they are effectively shuttered by their parent company Activision and another one bites the dust.
Possibly the biggest joke of all is that, according to Destructoid, Prototype 2 was the best selling game in North America when it launched in April. Even being the top dog for the month it launched apparently wasn’t enough in the eyes of Activision to redeem the franchise enough to keep the studio chugging ahead on more games. The official word from Activision, as posted by Kotaku, reads as follows:
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.
So maybe a lucky few will get to work on the next DLC for Call of Duty or maybe even work on some form of multiplayer framework for another game that isn’t their own. Either way, they’ve at least confirmed that Prototype 2 for PC will still be coming out on July 24th as planned. I guess that’s something though it’s little consolation for the fine folks who just lost their jobs.
(via Kotaku, image credit via Radical Entertainment)
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