streamline-studios posts

Yet another game developer is closing its doors thank to the currently poor worldwide economic situation. According to this Babel Fish-translated news story, the Amsterdam-based game outsourcing company Streamline Studios has filed for bankruptcy. It has now closed its offices and laid off its remaining employees. Streamline helped out with the development of artwork and other assets for game titles like Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War and many others.

In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, the company's co-founder Hector Fernandez admits that Streamline, which had over 50 employees at the beginning of the year, was looking to weather the economic storm. However several long term contracts with game publishers "started falling by the wayside" in 2009 and one of their biggest clients shut down this year. All of that combined with the weakness in the US dollar made business too hard for the company to stay afloat.

However Fernandez seems like he believes Streamline will come back, saying that, " . . . all of its workings will continue to live on. We're basically taking a step back, reassessing the situation, and then essentially beginning our re-invention." Even Streamline's company web site, even though it's basically a placeholder design, is actually filled with holiday cheer as you can see above. As usual with these situation we hope Streamline's former employees land on their feet.

The developers at Sweden based GRIN are reaping in the praise of their recently release of Bionic Commando Rearmed and today the company announced an expansion . . . sort of. The developer announced that it would team up with Dutch company Streamline Studios for "a strategic agreement that will allow both companies to achieve greater flexibility and game development capacity for AAA titles."

While not exactly a merger of the two companies, the new agreement will allow Streamline to augment "GRIN's development capacities in art, design, and programming." GRIN is currently working on two announced projects; the full blown Bionic Commando retail action game and a title based on the recent action movie Wanted. Streamline has created art content, CGI movies and other content for a wide variety of games including Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3, Overlord, Battlefield 2142 and others.