red-5-studios posts

It's a new year and the first month of January 2010 was a busy one for PC gaming news. Part of the reason was the annual Consumer Electronics Show where there were a few interesting announcements that concerned PC gaming. However there were also plenty of other news items in the past 31 days that will affect us in the coming year.

In fact our normal top 10 list was so full of things we could report that we managed to stick in a couple of extra items as honorable mentions. If this list is any indication 2010 will be a very busy year for news in our industry.

Click on the image above to continue reading The Top 10 PC Game News Stories For January 2010

One day after rumors hit the interwebs about mass layoffs at Red 5 Studios, the MMO game developer has now issued an official press release confirming that the company has undergone a "restructuring". The press release states, " . . . some team members chose to part ways while others were let go" but specific numbers were not revealed in the press release.

Red 5 Studios, formed several years ago by former World of Warcraft team leaders from Blizzard, has been working in near secrecy on their debut MMO project. The company did license the Offset Engine from Offset Software several years ago (ironically Offset Software has also been working in near secrecy on their own game) but it's currently not known if the engine is still being used. Unconfirmed rumors on certain web sites said the developer's first project, a FPS MMO, is now on hold while the remaining team members are now working on a game for the Chinese market. However, Red 5's own press release today said the company " remains committed to releasing a AAA quality, online title targeted for a worldwide release."

Check out an update we received from the company's PR rep after the jump

A game development studio co-founded by former members of the World of Warcraft development team has reportedly laid off a large fraction of its workers. Gamasutra reports via unnamed sources that Red 5 Studios has recently let go of about 30 of its approximately 100 workers. So far Red 5 Studios has yet to officially comment on these reports.

Red 5 Studios was formed in the fall of 2005. It's co-founders include former Blizzard team members Mark Kern and William Petras who worked as the team leader and art director, respectively, on World of Warcraft. The company has been working in near-silence on an MMO project since its formation. It's last press release was issued in November 2008.

Update: Kotaku claims to have more info on the layoffs (again from unnamed sources) saying that Red 5 Studios now has just 30 people employed. The company was very close to closing entirely but Kotaku's sources say the company was saved by an unnamed buyer. The developer also claims that Red 5 Studios was working on a MMO FPS project but that game is now on hold while the studio works on a game for the Asian market.

We've been waiting for a long, long time to find out what in the wide, wide world of sports developer Red 5 Studios is making. The MMO developer, founded back in 2005 by former members of Blizzard's World of Warcraft team, has only said their first project would be published by Webzen and use the Offset game graphics engine developed by Offset Software (now owned by Intel).

Gamasutra has a new interview with Red 5 execs Michael Weingartner and Mark Kern and, well, it looks like the studio is still not willing to share what they are doing. Kern states that they are at least thinking about when and how they plan to announce their first game, saying. "We're kind of in the meeting stages, planning that out, and we're pretty excited because it's going to be the first time that we get to show everyone what we've been working towards." Still it seems that we are still a ways away from that reveal with Kern saying only, "In the coming months."

In the PC game industry there are really only two types of games; those that are announced and those that are being developed currently in secret. These titles are what we are calling "black ops games". These are the titles that we know are in development but at the moment there's very little info on what these titles are even like, much less any word on a release date.

We have seen an example of this type of game earlier this week when it was revealed that Ensemble Studios was working on a planned MMO based on the Halo franchise. That game was canceled before the title was even announced and history is full of similar games that were being worked on but were canceled before they were officially revealed (of course there's also been a ton of games that were fully revealed but then canceled before their planned release...but that's another feature story)

So are there such black ops titles currently being made right now? You betcha. They are being created by the top developers in the business and range from first person shooter titles to RTS games to MMO projects. In this feature article, Big Download will take a look at a number of these games, some of which you may note even be aware of. However this is only the tip of the iceberg as many other PC games that we know nothing about are currently being developed as we speak...unannounced and still in the dark.