Damnation team sacked by Codemasters?
Behind the scenes problems come to the fore
Blue Omega and Codemasters' Damnation didn't exactly go down well with the critics when it was released last month, and it seems the game's publisher wasn't best pleased with studio's efforts.
According to Kotaku, the entire development team of Damnation at Blue Omega has been laid-off by the publisher.
The sackings have resulted in a raft of lawsuits, which allege that Codemasters effectively relieved Blue Omega from development duties on their own game. Lawsuits related to the game's release target two additional studios, one of which apparently continued development work despite Blue Omega's instructions, while another just didn't do a very good job.
Poor sales of the game haven't helped these problems, and all in all it is becoming clear why the game has faired so poorly.
Comments
Just to clarify, it's not Codemasters who laid off the development team. Blue Omega laid off a good portion of the development team because of problems with Codemasters not paying their bills on time.
The general flow of events is that Blue Omega and Codemasters worked out a deal to make Damnation. Blue Omega contracted to a couple other development groups to help. Codemasters jerked Blue Omega around, the subcontractors did a piss poor job, Blue Omega got caught in the middle and Codemasters, ultimately, released the game before it was properly finished.
With Codemasters not delivering the finances they promised and with subcontractors not delivering what they were paid to deliver, Blue Omega had no choice but to cut some devs free for now, but Codemasters didn't fire anyone themselves, just helped create a situation where Blue Omega had no choice.