$13 million project
Staff at the Australian developer Auran, the team behind the Codemaster Online-published MMO Fury, are facing a bleak Christmas following the news that they've been laid-off from the company.Auran has spent an estimated $13 million on creating the Unreal Engine 3 powered Free-to-Play PvP MMORPG,Fury, but the reception of the game has been less than positive and has left Auran in a critical financial state.
Voluntary Administrators have been called in and staff have been given their marching orders, though Australian blog New Age does state that 'the "Auran Games" company will continue with a greatly reduced headcount.'
In a statement sent to screenplay, Auran CEO Tony Hilliam remained optimistic on the future of Fury and took the opportunity to make it clear that their other franchise Trainz, is still running strong.
"Whilst this is the end of Auran Developments, it is far from the end of Fury and Trainz.Trainz is the world's leading rail simulator and has a community of more than 250,000 registered users around the world. It is published in dozens of countries and there are many products in the market today. The bulk of the Trainz team will continue to work on current projects and these projects will be released next year."
Regarding Fury, Hilliam says Auran "built a team to make a world beating game and sadly we have not reached our goals - yet".
"Our performance to date has meant we could no longer fund the 70 strong dev team. However, Fury: Age of the Chosen will be launched as planned Friday 8pm GMT, said Hilliam referring to the new add-on."
"We have put together a small but committed team to continue developing Fury on an ongoing basis. This core team, as we announced last week, are a passionate group of people committed to making Fury a success. We will be releasing bug fixes, content and feature updates on a regular basis and in fact they will be more frequent with our new agile team."
"I believe that once people hear about F:AotC and the new Free to Play business model, we'll start building up the player numbers and revenues that will make the game successful."
"I expect the naysayers will have different thoughts, but they haven't played the new build...yet." he concluded.
Source :: The Age
