They say that only the good die young, but sometimes this old adage extends to the bad as well. All Points Bulletin (APB for those of us who have never been in the back of a cop car) was released only three months ago, but the cops-and-robbers style MMO is being put behind bars already. The game was lauded for its strong customization options but lost a lot of points for having dull combat, horrible player versus player and a very generic quest system.
While fans of the game are certainly upset, most of us who followed the news surrounding the title wouldn’t be surprised. Realtime Worlds, best known for the X-Box 360 hit Crackdown, entered administration (bankruptcy over in the United Kingdom) and laid off a significant part of their work force last month. APB’s Community Officer Ben Bateman posted a final thanks on the official forums:
APB has been a fantastic journey, but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature end. Today we are sad to announce that despite everyone’s best efforts to keep the service running; APB is coming to a close. It’s been a pleasure working on APB and with all its players. Together we were building an absolutely amazing game, and for that, we thank you. You guys are awesome!
It looks like this is the end of Realtime Worlds, folks. It’s a real shame that the studio that brought us Crackdown is on the down and out. While I was originally psyched for the game, really poor reviews led me to steer clear, and I imagine that’s true for a lot of us. What do you guys think of RTW closing? Any parting thoughts for this once celebrated studio?
Source: Kotaku
Sad to see, but apparently Epic might be buying them out: http://pc.ign.com/articles/112/1121569p1.html
It’s always a sad day when a good company ends up fizzling out, especially since they had a lot of potential. While it didn’t do that well, I’d like to see some MMO’s adopt some features from APB, like the amount of customization available or the payment system (I’d totally play MMOs more if I could pay for playtime instead of an entire month).
well that sucks. Hopefully Epic buys RTW and has them APB a single payer game or implements RTW customization/character creation tools into future games.