UPDATE (April 16th, 4:12pm EDT): Within an hour of publishing, IGN received a statement from 2K Games confirming the studio closure. Thanks to Penterax in the comments for the tip.
According to a tip sent to Kotaku Australia, and currently no other source, 2K Australia has been closed down. The studio is most recently known for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, but they have also contributed to all three BioShock titles and, when they were a formal division of Irrational Games, worked on SWAT 4 and Tribes: Vengeance. And yes, it is very tempting to call it “Police Quest: SWAT 4”.
At the time of writing, we are still waiting on an official statement from 2K Australia or its parent companies, 2K Games and Take-Two Interactive. The source claims that all staff members will lose their jobs and the entire studio will be closed. There are also not too many alternatives in the continent. EA has a subsidiary that develops mobile titles, Firemonkeys Studios, which has about 60 employees. They are about 400 miles away from where 2K Australia was though. A Google Doc is being maintained with many prospects, although about half of the openings are in North America and New Zealand.
According to IGN, 2K
According to IGN, 2K confirmed:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/04/16/2k-australia-is-reportedly-closing
I feel saddened and confused, myself. 2K Aus seems to be a talented and successful dev house. I’m hoping 2K will give us some really good reasons for doing this.
Best wishes to all effected by this – and thanks for all your good gaming work as 2K Aus and Irrational Games!
Time to start a gaming
Time to start a gaming company of their own, if they can find some other IT/programming work in the meantime. The top dogs will get headhunted, but the others will have to find some other employment. I used to be a stagehand, TV, theater, trade shows, and we were only employed short term, by the performance/show and if the economy/or jobs in the industry were in too short of a supply, especially for recessions, I would just enroll in college for 2 or 3 semesters until the work/economy returned to normal. I do not know about Australia’s social safety net, but I would imagine that they have unemployment and their company provides a severance package, and depending on the type of mass layoff/closing there is probably readjustment/reeducation funds available. I would always be on unemployment for any weeks that I was unemployed, and the summer months were usually slowest for me. Hopefully they had enough advanced notice from their employer to begin their job search early before they were laid off, and severance and unemployment will help in the short term. I know in the US depending of the size of the company, mass layoffs or closings have to be reported in advance to the employees, and the state, so that readjustment measures/services can be offered to the displaced employees.
This would be shocking; it’s
This would be shocking; it’s not like it’s a crap studio or anything.
I love the games from this
I love the games from this studio, but I dont know how to feel about these company wing closures anymore, am I sad, do I care, does it affect the future of gaming that these particular people no longer work on shared progects under the same roof……… Bioshock 1-2-I, all sick, yes I loved 2 also, and I’m playing through borderlands right now, almost done #1
Sad
Sad