Free Radical is dead, its doors are shut for good
Multiple sources over the entirety of the internet are confirming that Free Radical Design, who were formed after many of the GoldenEye team left Rare in 1999, have closed their doors, and are now effectively dead. It is said the news came as a shock to many of the staff from company, which totalled over 200, as they arrived to work today only to find the doors locked, with a note taped on bearing instructions to meet at a nearby hotel lobby for what would be a final company meeting.
Dave Doak and Steve Ellis, who were Free Radical’s co-founders, have already revealed they will be starting a new company called Pumpkin Beach – although only a handful of Free Radical employees will be making the move with them. The other 180+ will be facing a rather horrible Christmas period without a pay check.
TimeSplitters 4, which was set to be a spoof on many other big name FPS games, was the next big game set to come out of Free Radical’s doors, but it is now in limbo, and it is unknown if work will continue at Pumpkin Beach. The game was still publisherless at the time of the company’s demise, even though almost two years of work was put into it.
Free Radical’s last game was the Ubisoft published Haze, which was not the best swan song for a developer to go out on.
12 comments ↓
Allyn
December 18th, 2008
oh shit
a good friend of mine worked there, that really sucks. And losing it in general is a real shame…
Surrealist
December 18th, 2008
That sucks, the Timesplitters games were incredible, I really hope that Pumpkin Beach makes the fourth one, it’d be a huge loss otherwise…
Nogert
December 19th, 2008
I thought EA bought them, I’m sure Timesplitters had the EA logo.
Sean
December 19th, 2008
It was published by EA. That’s it.
Thomas
December 19th, 2008
Yeah, Free Radical are (or should I say were) totally independent.
The first two Timesplitters were published by Eidos. Second Sight was published by Codemasters, Timesplitters 3 was published by EA, and Haze was published by Ubisoft.
I think Free Radical also kept the IP of each of there games as well, so it is possible they could continue all the series under their new name. However, they may not have the money or staff to do that just yet.
Monkey Rimmer
December 19th, 2008
If they’d have made another Timesplitters rather than the bag of crap aka Haze maybe they’d still be open for business. Tough deal for the staff, hard world in which we live!
Alasdair
December 19th, 2008
Shellshocked. The Timesplitters games were great. Half the reason I bought an Xbox 360 was so I would definately be able to play TS4. Just gotta hope they continue work on it, because I know it would’ve been fantastic.
Seth
December 19th, 2008
Wow.. bit of a surprise. I never even heard any murmurings that they were in trouble.
I guess Haze must have cost more to make than I thought..
WIIBOY101
December 19th, 2008
ITS WHAT THEY CALL POOR BUSINESS EVERYONE KNOWS PS3 DEVELOPMENT= NO PROFIT EVERYONE KNOWS PS3 IS A FLOP AND IS IN 3RD PLACE EVERYONE KNOWS HAZE WAS JUST A HALO COPY COME HACK AND GLUE FPS GAME…
IF FREE RADICAL WENT WII EXCLUSIVE MADE TIMESPLITTERS 4 AND HAZE FOR THE WII ONLY AND SPENT TIME POLISHING IT INSTEAD OF THIS BLIND PS3 WORSHIPING HAZE COULD HAVE BEEN GOOD AND FREE RADICAL WOULD STILL EXIST
ITS PS3 AND 3RD PARTYS PICKING PS3 SUPPORT THATS THE ISSUE HERE
JOHNNY BE GOOD
December 19th, 2008
ps3 is dead and ps3 is expensive to code and its controller stinks SHOULD HAVE DONE A HIGH VOLTAGE AND BACKED THE WII OR DS AND WII
Steve
December 19th, 2008
its a tough call.
FRD were independant, so yeah they were always in danger as any self employed business will tell you but the returns on Haze should have been balanced out by an exclusivity deal with Sony. Pretty sure Haze sold alright too.
It says worrying things about the VG industry tho. Is this the future? where to survive developers need to give up their interlectual property to publishers? if thats the case an idea like Haze (that had promise and originality but failed) would never have passed risk assessment under EA and FRD would end up making the next ill faited MOH game.
Anyhow Lucas Arts was supposed to be buying these guys out, so maybe they will. Since FRD were rumoured to be working on something for them.
Someone will definatly pick up Timesplitters 4 up tho, the game would still sell hansomely it’s just hoping its another excentric set of british talents that get the job and not some yanks who tweak the arcady tongue and cheek nature of the title for whats currently selling well ( gritty realism and hollywood bravardo…)
eww… but the real crime is Rare (always the less creative and energetic party since the split) are cradled by Microsoft despite how frequently dull their latest outputs have been.
PS… The 2 comments above me are full of suck, and you should propably be better of just ignoring them
DAN
June 9th, 2009
Free radical is now crytek uk and pupkin beach and may or may not make the 4th timesplitters game but even if they don’t it will be made by another company. what we have to hope for is that its is made crytek uk,pupkin beach or a company who will do the same style as FRD.