Whilst we weren’t exactly impressed by Bodycount, it’s sad to see the news that Codemasters are set to close the studio responsible, Codemasters Guildford, as reported by Eurogamer earlier today.
A 30 day consultation period has begun with 66 staff informed of the move by Codemasters to ‘retire’ the development studio as Codemasters look to re-focus on their acclaimed and respected racing titles which originate from from their Warwickshire headquarters, and also forming a team to work on ‘a new racing IP’ alongside the F1 2011 team in Birmingham. That makes sense given the fact that Dirt, F1, Grid, and the forthcoming F1 Online are all doing well and the future releases are eagerly awaited.
The troubled development of Bodycount will doutbless be examined in the future, but executive producer Stuart Black, general manager Adrain Bolton and game director Andrew Wilson have all left the company. Rumours of a lack of funding and a negative reception obviously didn’t help the release, which went into the all-formats top 40 at 36th place.
Regardless, here’s hoping all the staff involved will either find employment with the other Codemaster teams or find work elsewhere.
We can only hope that the multiplayer ‘ready’ bug is patched either before the studio closes or by one of the other teams to at least let existing purchasers to at least get into games.
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