rogue-warrior posts

It's been know for some time that UK developer Rebellion is in the middle of shutting down its development studio in Derby. However Gamasutra is reporting that there are now accusations that Rebellion is holding off paying staff members from the Derby studio, which worked on the critical and sales flop Rogue Warrior.

Gamasutra states it received an email claiming to be from the wife of a Rebellion Derby developer but who wished to remain anonymous. The email stated, "Rebellion have failed to pay all the remaining Derby employees any wages owed for April, and any agreed redundancy payments for all those who left during April." When contacted by Gamasutra, Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley repeated their plans to shut down the Derby location but added, "We're in the final stages of this process and for obvious reasons I can't comment on individual or unattributed comments."

Last January, rumors hit the internet that UK-based developer Rebellion was about to close its Derby studio, which made the critically slammed shooter Rogue Warrior. Now the Develop web site reports through unnamed sources that not only is the Derby studio shutting down but that their Oxford headquarters will be letting up to 20 staff members go.

If this report is true it's something of a surprise considering that the Oxford studio held the Aliens Vs Predator development team. That game, released last month, is reportedly a big sales hit for Rebellion and its publisher Sega with talk of a sequel already starting.

One of the biggest game flops, in terms of both sales and reviews, of 2009 was Rogue Warrior. It definitely wasn't the world's hardest game to complete; most reviews said the title could be finished in two hours or less. The first person shooter was published by Bethesda Softworks and developed by UK-based Rebellion. Now VG247.com is reporting that Derby, the Rebellion studio that developed Rogue Warrior, could be shutting down.

The studio was originally founded as Core Design and helped to create the first Tomb Raider games for Eidos. Rebellion bought the studio back in 2006. While VG247.com at first reported that the studio was being closed today, Rebellion has now said in an official statement, " . . . we have decided to review the need for the Derby facilities, and consultation with staff at Derby is ongoing." Rebellion has two other development studios, one of which is working on the upcoming Aliens Vs Predator.

The GameTap download subscription PC game site has put up its weekly update and has added a new casual game, 4 Elements, to its paid subscription line-up. Which is nice, we guess, except that GameTap had planned to add Rainbow Six: Vegas this week. However technical issues prevented that from happening so we will have to wait another week. However, they did add Rebellion's action game Rogue Trooper to their free subscription plan. Players can check that game out for the next week.

In related news, GameTap's blog site has posted word they will be removing a number of Lego-based PC games from their roster on December 17. However the site hinted that new Lego-based games will be added to GameTap in the near future.

The first week of December sees several retail and downloadable PC games and expansions make their way to store shelves and download services:

Dirt 2 - While the console versions of Codemasters' rally racer were released last September, the PC version that comes out this week has the distinction of being the first PC game released in the US that has DirectX11-supported graphics out of the box.

Thursday is a special day for many as PC gamers hit the download site to see what deals they can find. We have the latest list of price cuts to check out right now:

• GamersGate has an assortment of titles on sale including Kings's Bounty: The Legend for $12.49 and Frontline: Field of Thunder for just $4.95
• Impulse has several games on the price chopping block this weekend including Iron Grip Warlord for $9.99 and Supreme Commander Gold for $22.49.
  
• Steam has cut the price of Frontlines: Fuel of War to just $7.49 this weekend. You can also buy Star Wars Galaxies The Complete Online Adventures for 50 percent off until November 26. The newly released game Ninja Blade has a 10 percent discount for the first week Also you can get the original Dirt racing game for 80 percent off its normal Steam price with the pre-purchase of the PC version of Dirt 2. Finally you can pre-purchase Rogue Warrior for 10 percent off its normal price before its Dec. 1 release.
• Direct2Drive also has Star Wars Galaxies: The Complete Online Adventures for 50 percent off. You can also take $5 off of Torchlight from now until Sunday if you use the discount code 5OFFTORCH at checkout.
  

It's been a long and somewhat twisty road in the development of Rogue Warrior but Bethesda Softworks' long-in-development first person shooter finally has a confirmed release date. After seeing a December 1 ship date on GameStop's official web site, Big Download has confirmed with a Bethesda Softworks PR rep that December 1 is indeed the date they intend to release the game for the PC and other platforms.

Based loosely on the life of former Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko, the game was first announced way back in 2006 with Zombie as its developer for a 2007 release. However, Bethesda Softworks went silent on the game's development after the inital announcement and stayed silent until this spring when it revealed that Rebellion had taken over the game's development and that actor Mickey Rourke would voice the lead role of Marchinko.

The next three months will see quite a few PC games being released to stores and/or via digital download. At Big Download we would be remiss if we didn't alert you ahead of time to what PC games we are keeping an eye on for the fall/holiday season.

Yesterday we posted the first part of our three part series of what we think will be the big PC games this fall with all of them currently scheduled to be released in September. Today we have 14 more games to check out that are at the moment scheduled for October and the first part of November. Remember, our release date are based on the best info we currently have; they can, and most likely will in a couple of cases, change.

Click on the image above to continue reading The Big PC Games for Fall 2009 - Part Two

Bethesda Softworks may not be chatting about their next project from their internal studios (that would be Bethesda Game Studios and ZeniMax Onliine Studios) but they are talking about their fall 2009 game releases from third party development teams. One of them is Rogue Warrior, their modern day first person shooter that was announced way back in 2006 but got side-tracked and was "re-announced" with a new development team, Rebellion, earlier this year.

Now Gamestop has apparently gotten an exclusive deal with Bethesda to sell the game at $10 off it's normal $49.99 price before the game ships to stores. While the release date on Gamestop's site states it will ship October 1, Bethesda's official word is that the game will ship to stores sometime this fall.

About Rogue Warrior: "Playing as Richard "Demo Dick" Marcinko, you go behind the iron curtain to disrupt a suspected North Korean ballistic missile program. Soon into the mission, you uncover a conspiracy that could turn the tides of the Cold War in the communists' favor. You must then take the mission into your own hands as you enter into the bowels of the USSR to destroy a technology that could change the balance of geopolitical power, leaving a trail of destruction in your wake!"

Download HD Rogue Warrior E3 2009 Trailer (80 MB)