One of Australia's most promising studios faces closure
Team Bondi, the LA Noire developer engulfed in a working practices scandal, has entered administration.
The Sydney studio, which at its peak had employed over 100 staff, now faces closure. An administrator will, by convention, seek to reshape the business so it can continue as a going concern.
However, it appears that the Team Bondi management and some of its staff have already resigned to the fact that the studio will close. Employees are already in deep discussions with other companies.
Develop understands that some Team Bondi assets and many of its staff are being transferred to Kennedy Miller Mitchell (KMM) – a Sydney production studio that works across a range of media, including games.
An insider, who engages with both companies locally, has said that many, or all, Team Bondi employees have been offered a job at KMM.
A Team Bondi spokesperson declined to comment on the matter when approached by Develop. A statement from the company was sought though had not materialised.
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Troubles for Team Bondi began when a group of developers claimed they had been unfairly removed from the LA Noire credits roll.
That sparked further whistleblowing from former studio staff, some of which claimed to have worked 100-hour weeks, including weekends, in order to meet project milestones.
Then internal emails began to leak and circulate, many of which detailed further the controversial work practices at Team Bondi.
The overtime scandal began to engulf Team Bondi – an independent studio which relies on reputation to win work contracts.
The company may have escalated the problem itself by not issuing any statements that challenged the overtime allegations, save for one opinion piece written by a senior developer.
Team Bondi’s collapsing business will be a momentous loss for the Australian games industry.
The studio had a promising future ahead after it finished development on debut project LA Noire, a game that won critical and commercial acclaim. The crime epic is, to date, the UK’s second-biggest selling game at retail in 2011.
LA Noire’s spectacle of advanced facial animation technology had wowed even film critics, and it has been long-rumoured that Rockstar will use the same tech for many of its future games.
These circumstances combined gave the impression that Australia had found its new flagship studio in Team Bondi, a pioneer for the new age of triple-A games.
But the group's fall from grace couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Australia had for many years suffered massive studio closures, such as with Krome, and was generally considered to be in decline before Team Bondi broke onto the scene.
Now Team Bondi is set to leave the industry as Australia suffers even further losses. THQ recently closed down two studios in the country, bringing an end to more than 100 Australian jobs.
Technically, Zumba Fitness is number 2 biggest selling game at Retail. LA Noire is somewhere further down, somewhere...
It's sad news that something like this could potentially put the company into administration. But is removal of your name from the credits reason to mess up the company this bad?
Everyone knows that Dev's work stupid amounts of hours and when you're making a games that is literally changing the face of gaming well...sacrifices have to be made?
credit where credits due of course and no one should have to suffer unfairly but there has to be more to this than meets the eye.
Here's hoping the Aussies aren't holding anything against the team cause they were being published by a certain controversial studio...
Ah, thanks for the spot. I was supposed to say it was the second-biggest seller at UK retail in 2011. Obviously should have specified further.
Crunching your employees to the point where it harms productivity, and that it massively increases turnover, is not just "part of the job", and I really wish people would stop trying to justify it.
Extended crunch is a symptom of bad management, not a necessary part of creating a good game.
Are we really blaming this on the fact that some developers wanted some credit after pouring their lives into a product, at the expense of spending time with their families, really? Yes, I'm sure it's nothing to do with the fact that the project was so badly managed, that it took 7 years to make. It's all the fault of employees that don't to be treated like sweatshop workers, clearly.
Condolences to all affected by this.
Its easy to just blame all this on the bad press generated by the whistle-blowers, and im not saying that that press didnt have any impact on the outcome but.. the game development overshot its schedule by FOUR YEARS! the game took twice as long as it was contracted to produce. Do you think that money for upkeep of a 100+ skilled/specialised programmers and artist for 4 extra years comes cheap?
They are bankrupt because the game would need to sell like hotcakes for the next 6 months without slowing, to make enough money to pay back the development costs poured into it by R*
..and that is unlikely to happen.
