netdevil posts

Back in November, before Gazillion Entertainment sold off part of NetDevil's team members to the Lego Group, it was announced that Scott Brown, the founder and head of NetDevil, had departed the studio. Now Brown and other Netdevil members have resurfaced with a new game development studio, END Games Entertainment.

There's not much info on what the new team is working on but a post today on the company's blog site states that their first games will be of the free-to-play variety, saying, "We're going to invite our player communities into our experiences MUCH earlier in development than the industry would normally do." It looks like the team is " ... getting close to an early alpha release of our first title" so hopefully we will see what END has in store for us soon.

[Via Kotaku]

Just a couple of days after Cryptic Studios CEO John Needham announced he would be leaving the MMO game developer, Gazillion Entertainment announced today that Needham is joining the company as its new CEO. Needham will be working with David Brevik who was named as Gazillion's president just a couple of months ago.

Needham takes over Gazillion at a time where the company has announced that it will be concentrating its efforts on developing free-to-play browser-based MMOs. It sold off its development team for its October 2010 game Lego Universe to the Lego Group just a few weeks ago. It still operates several game development studios including one that's making a Marvel Universe Online MMO title.

[Via email press release]

Big Download just got off the phone with Gazillion Entertainment's PR head who gave us more info about what's happening with one of its MMO game studios, the Denver-based NetDevil. The rep told us that Lego Group, the owners of the Lego toy brand, are now taking over full development responsbilities for Lego Universe, the family friendly MMO that NetDevil developed for the toy company and launched in October 2010.

As a result of this move, Lego Group is buying both the Lego Universe development team and the NetDevil offices that the team currently works in (Financial terms were not disclosed). The other NetDevil employees will be moving to another office somewhere nearby the original offices. The remaining Netdevil team members will continue to develop the browser-based online action-RPG Fortune Online, which was just announced a few weeks ago and is now in closed beta testing. The Gazillion PR rep would not comment on the status of NetDevil's long-in-development space-based MMO Jumpgate Evolution which is currently involved in a lawsuit with Codemasters.

There are layoffs associated with this transition but at the time of this post the Gazillion PR rep did not have specific numbers available although he did state the numbers would be small. The PR rep also sent this quote from Gazillion president David Brevik:

"The transition of members of our team to the LEGO Group allows us to conclude the work-for-hire segment of NetDevil's business and lets us expand our internally-published, free-to-play game businesses based on our own properties and licensed properties. Gazillion is wholly focused on developing, operating, and publishing the next generation of browser-delivered games We're proud of the LEGO Universe game that our team built, and we are certain that it has a bright future."

Update: We have now been told by Gazillion's PR head that less than a quarter of Lego Universe's team members were let go as a result of this move. However he did not have specific numbers. He also told us that about 40 NetDevil team members are currently working on Fortune Online.

Long time MMO game developer NetDevil may have suffered through mass layoffs this week. Eurogamer reports that Toby Cochran, an animator for the company's Lego Universe game that launched just last October, reports that he lost his position at NetDevil, adding, "From what we've been told a handful of artists will be kept on board and continue working on Lego Universe. But at the moment that will be a very, VERY small team." NetDevil's parent company, Gazillion Entertainment, has yet to confirm news of the layoffs.

Netdevil still has another MMO in the works, the long-in-development space-based game Jumpgate Evolution, which is now dealing with a lawsuit from its publisher, Codemasters, for alledgedly taking too long to complete. More recently Netdevil launched a closed beta for a browser-based action-RPG Fortune Online.

Gazillion Entertainment is making steps to enter the free-to-play game business. Today the publisher announced and launched the closed beta for Fortune Online, a browser-based free-to-play fantasy action-RPG. The game comes from its Netdevil studio who launched the MMO Lego Universe last year and are still working on the long-in-development title Jumpgate Evolution.

Fortune Online looks like it is very much of a dungeon crawler game in the Diablo mode with the press release stating that players can team up with others online to slay monsters, gather loot and gain experience points. It promises that the game also has "extensive skill trees and awesome item upgrade choices." You can sign up for the closed beta test now at the game's official web site.

The MMO game developer Gazillion Entertainment is making some changes and additions in its executive ranks and also renaming one of its development studios, according to a new press release today. The now formerly named Gargantuan Studios, which is currently making the Marvel Universe super hero MMO game, is now titled Secret Identity.

Gazillion also announced today that David Brevik, formerly the studio director for Secret Identity and the project lead for the Marvel Universe game, has been promoted to Gazillio's new President and COO. Jeff Linde, previously the Senior Development Director of Marvel Universe, has been named the new Studio Head for Secret Identity. Also the company announced it has named Dan Fiden to be its new VP of Publishing. Fiden previously worked as Manager of Playfish San Francisco. Gazillion said he "will be driving the company's focus on digital development and distribution" hinting that the developer is working on web-browser based games.

Developer Netdevil has been working on its space-based MMO game Jumpgate Evolution for some time and apparently the wait was too much for the game's publisher Codemasters. Our sister site Massively reports today that Codemasters has filed a lawsuit against Netdevil and its parent company Gazillion Entertainment, charging both with breach of contract as well as other issues.

Court documents from Codemasters have the publisher claiming that it paid Netdevil $1.4 million to help underwrite the development of Jumpgate Evolution, which in fact is a revamp of Netdevil's first game Jumpgate. Codemasters also claims that Netdevil was to launch Jumpgate Evolution by February 24, 2009. In May 2009 Netdevil announced that the game would in fact be delayed but the developer has been fairly silent on the state of the game's progress since then despite showing a playable version back at E3 2010.

In what may or may not be related news, the game's official forum have announced that Scott Brown, the founder of Netdevil, has left the studio for unnamed reasons. Brown founded the Colorado-based Netdevil back in 1997. The official statement from Gazillion states, "With a talented team at NetDevil in place, the studio is poised for a bright future. We once again thank Scott for his contributions and we wish him all the best in his future endeavors."

Over two weeks before the game officially ships to stores, the long awaited family friendly MMO game Lego Universe is now available to play for a select group of gamers. These are the folks who pre-ordered the game via Lego-specific outlets such as the game's official web site, Lego stores and the Legoland amusement park.

Originally the plan was for those specific pre-orders to have access to the game's servers on October 12 but those plans have now been moved up by a few days. The NetDevil-developed game will be made available for everyone else when it ships to "regular" retail stores on October 26.

The family-friendly themed MMO that's been years in the making is now technically ready to be released. The Lego Group announced that Lego Universe from developer NetDevil has "gone gold" meaning the game is now being replicated onto disks for placement in retail boxes. The game was first announced back in March 2007.

As we reported back in June, the game will have two launch dates. On October 12 Lego Universe will open up for people who pre-ordered the game via ia official Lego stores, the Lego web site and the Legoland theme park. On October 26, the game will be made available for everyone else as the Lego Universe title is released in other retail stores. In the meantime you can still sign up to be a beta tester for the game before it's official release.

Even as developer Netdevil gets ready to finish up work on the family-themed MMO Lego Universe, The Lego Group is working with another developer to release a digital trading card game based on the MMO. Today The Lego Group announced that the trading card game will be released in 2011, after the Lego Universe MMO will be released on October 26.

The trading card game will be created by Dire Wolf Digital, the recently launched developer based in Denver and made up of veterans of Sony Online's various digital trading card games. No other details on the Lego Universe trading card title were announced.