Kuju Entertainment Closes Its Dedicated Unreal Engine Branch
Sources tell Kotaku that British game company Kuju Entertainment has shuttered Chemistry, its Sheffield, UK studio. Chemistry was founded in 2002 as “Kuju Sheffield”.
Kuju operates five UK-based studios: Headstrong Games (House of the Dead: Overkill for SEGA), NiK NaK (games for kids), doublesix (Burn Zombie Burn), Kuju Manila (Wii mini-games), Zoe Mode (CRUSH for SEGA) and Chemistry (Unreal Engine games). If this rumour is true, however, Kuju now operates four.
According to Chemistry’s website, “Chemistry is a game development studio building on the foundations of decades of experience and now making amazing products on the next-gen toolset, Unreal Engine 3…. The studio operates within Kuju’s stated strategy of making its studios more autonomous to support greater creativity, to allow greater focus in each studio and to enable faster growth across the group.”
Back in January, Kuju began reducing the company headcount — though, only a “small number” at Chemistry seemed to be at risk. The last game we heard Chemistry was working on was a World War I first-person-shooter called To End All Wars. The game was slated for late 2008, but was not released.
We have contacted Kuju for a comment regarding this story.
- Next Post: Today’s Most Relaxin Trailer? Echochrono »
- « Previous Post: Muramasa The Demon Blade Preview: So, So Pretty
Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
And here I was hoping we'd go a full week without news of people getting laid off while E3 was going on. Guess I was wrong *sadface*
@Alexander_the_Badger: I think Necrovision (a horror game using the Painkiller engine that just got released) is based in WWI, but I'm sure it isn't historically accurate ^_^.
@Communist_Gamer: Well, they said that the video game industry was recession proof at the beginning of last year...but apparently that time has passed.
MixMaster81
@Duoae:
Did a quick search and found this:
[www.gamasutra.com]
Seems i was mistaken.
I thought Zoe Mode was 'no more'... and that they moved to the US. Are they still under the umbrella of Kuju?
@touchmypenguinagain:
The video game industry is a fickle one.
@Alexander_the_Badger:
Two reasons why it wouldn't be done. America did bugger all til the last part. The other is that there's not really much combat, it's sitting, waiting, getting bored, going over and if you're lucky getting to the enemy trench and dragging a hostage back. That's about it.
So, did they ever actually release anything?
If they had lots of WIP, there's the outside chance that Kuju are just closing the studio & integrating most of the staff.
Optimaximal
@King of Fun UK: oh, and gas. lots of chemical weapons.
curly haired boy
@celark: Still plenty of UK studios recruiting :)
Damn...and I am going to be looking for work in developers here in the UK soon as well...
celark
@Alexander_the_Badger: A couple of times... I think.
Its a great era in history, but you have to understand that most of WWI was going over the top of a tench and getting shot to shit by machine guns/artillery shells.
Which is why so many people died :p
I was close to taking a job there last year...glad i didnt, that would be the 3rd redundency in less than 4 years :P
touchmypenguinagain
A FPS based on World War 1?
Has that actually been done before?
Alexander_the_Badger