APB: The End of Realtime Worlds
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- Duration: 6:16
- Published: 2010-09-16
- Uploaded: 2011-02-03
- Author: thealicecore
today is a sad sad day :'[
Realtime Worlds Ltd was a video game developer based in Dundee, Scotland from 2002 until its closure in September 2010. Realtime Worlds was the largest independent game developer in Scotland with over 200 employees as well as a small Boulder, Colorado office.
The first release under the name Realtime Worlds was the critically acclaimed action-adventure, third-person game, Crackdown, an Xbox 360 exclusive title.
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. 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. In 2008, Crackdown was honoured as Best Debut by the GDC's Game Developers Choice awards.
On 14 February 2008, it was announced that Realtime Worlds had secured US$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 towards "continued expansion".
On 1 May 2010 Realtime Worlds annual accounts revealed a further US$21M investment was made in the company in January 2010. This brings the total investment in Realtime Worlds since 2006 to US$101M.
On 29 June 2010, after five years of development, with lengthy delays, APB was released to the general public. As of the 15 July, APB has a metacritic score of 58/100.
On 7 July 2010, Realtime Worlds announced that it was to restructure its work force to focus more on providing "total support" for APB.
On 16 September 2010, Realtime Worlds announced that it will be shutting down APB's servers for good.
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.
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.
Category:Companies established in 2002 Category:Companies disestablished in 2010 Category:Companies of Scotland Category:Companies that have entered administration in the United Kingdom Category:Defunct video game companies Realtime Worlds Category:Video game companies of the United Kingdom Category:Video game developers
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