Even with a skeleton dev team, Auran continued to work on its MMO Fury in an attempt to make it profitable, and more importantly, fun. Yet, despite a restructure and the launch of Fury League, Auran has finally closed the doors on the game, according to a post on the official forums by CEO Tony Hilliam.

The post states that Auran "reached [its] time limit" to keep Fury up and running. Out of options, the company has been forced to take the very sudden action of shutting down the game's servers and website within the next 48 hours. As such, I've included the contents of the post after the jump.

Not really a shock, or even a blip on the radar, but it signals the end of an unhappy page in the history of Australian game developers.

Fury Closing Down [Fury forums, thanks Alistair]

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Another press release has arrived from Auran regarding the newly established "Fury League". Yes, the same Fury League we covered four days ago, where Fury players can share in a $25,000 prize pool by competing in various ladders.

If you were wondering how the $25,000 is to be divided, don't worry, I was curious too. According to lead designer Cameron McNeil, players in the top bracket can earn $250 a week, while those at the arse-end can collect $8 per week. There are ten brackets all up.

Auran CEO Tony Hilliam says the Fury League is to be "more like a sport than a traditional computer game." To me, it sounds like the developer is, in an indirect way, bribing people to play. Cash for victory is a good incentive, but shouldn't gamers want to play because it's fun? If it's an extreme measure to bolster the player base, fair enough, but is the model sustainable? Where's the cash coming from?

Not that any of this will matter if the ladders can't get off the ground. I noticed this clause in the release:

A minimum of 2,000 players completing at least 10 games each prior to the commencement of the first Ladder period is required to justify the prize pool. Insufficient entries will result in either postponement or cancellation of the Ladders.

All the info after the jump.

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I'm not sure I completely understand what the Fury League is, but it sounds like Auran has changed its struggling Fury from an action-based fantasy MMO, into an action-based fantasy MMO where you can make money.

Okay, there's more to it than the cash-for-gaming aspect. Instead of earning abilities, new players will receive all 400+ on offer and 10,000 worth of Fury gold to deck themselves out. Sounds a bit like the tournament servers Blizzard recently introduced to World of Warcraft, but I could be mistaken.

According to the press release, Auran believes it's finally found the right balance of elements for its game, with CEO Tony Hilliam stating that "there are two things [our core community] really want - a game where skill is rewarded not time played and the chance to win cool prizes". $25,000 in prizes is a hunky number, but it's a far cry from the arse-kicking $1 million worth Auran offered during the game's beta.

You can't blame Auran for putting continued effort into making the game respectable. It's just hard to see how those efforts will be rewarded after the game's bumpy reception and the subsequent downsizing of the studio.

Full release after the jump.

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You guys remember Auran, don't you? The studio took quite a beating when Auran Developments, its parent company, went into administration late last year. While blame wasn't placed anywhere in particular, poor sales of its MMO Fury likely played a significant role in its collapse.

Recently, Australian Gamer decided to take a trip to the company's headquarters in Queensland for a walk-through and catch-up. Yes, Auran is still plugging away at Fury.

The interview with Tony Hilliam on the second page has everything you could possibly want to know about the state of Fury right now. Boiled down, Hilliam admits Auran made mistakes with the launch and design of the game, such as the difficulty for new players to get into it, and that numbers remain "disappointing". To counter these points, he says that the new business model, bug fixes and additional features have turned Fury into a "new game".

If only confidence and positive words were enough.

A Visit to Auran Games [Australian Gamer]

Auran is still alive and so is its MMO Fury, despite its parent company Auran Developments throwing in the towel late last year. Even with this setback, Auran was able to produce a hefty content update, Age of the Chosen, that it believed would rectify most of the original criticisms of the game, including its steep learning curve and dodgy performance. For good measure, it removed the subscription fee.

Shortly after the release of Age of the Chosen, Auran was able to confirm that it had even more updates in the pipeline, but surely, three months on, what developers are left have to be operating on two cornflakes and half a can of Red Bull?

Apparently not. MMORPG.COM managed to get a hold of Auran's CEO Tony Hilliam at GDC 2008, and Hilliam was able to reassure the site that the 13-year old company is committed to Fury. Yet, my eyebrows couldn't help but elevate at a few of Hilliam's comments:

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Over at InvestorTV there's an extremely eye-opening talk with some of Australia's most prominent game developers. Included in the all-local mix are Tony Hilliam, CEO of Auran; Tom Crago, CEO of Tantalus and Krome Studios' CEO Robert Walsh. While Hilliam gets stuck explaining the downfall of Auran, Tom and Robert go over the positives of games development in Oz.

The first part of the interview sees Hilliam deconstruct the failure of Fury, citing poor sales in the US and Europe and the sheer size of World of Warcraft as contributing factors:

"Ultimately, sales of Fury were worse than our low case projections. We did OK in Australia, we were top 10 in Australia, but Europe was a complete write-off. In the US – again the Australian sales have nearly outstripped the US market altogether. When Australia is almost your biggest market, you have a problem."

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An article over at the Courier Mail (no, not that one) has an update on the current state of Brisbane-based studio Auran. Both Tantalus CEO Tom Crago and Auran co-founder Graham Edelsten share words with the newspaper.

It was only a few months ago that Auran Developments, which managed the company, went into administration, resulting in a downsizing of Auran's healthy 85 employees to a skeletal 15.

According to the article, Auran hasn't thrown it's multi-million dollar MMO Fury to the sharks just yet (as evidenced by the release of the Age of the Chosen expansion late last year), and is looking to sell the underlying tech it used to create the game.

Graham Edelsten also had this to say about the Oz industry:

Mr Edelsten says Auran will stick to less ambitious projects, saying until the investment dollars match those of their overseas counterparts it is too risky to take on the giants.

Game still on for Auran [Courier Mail, via Sumea]

Update: Tantalus CEO Tom Crago has replied to Malcolm King, adding some much needed clarification and accuracy to the original article.

Yesterday, journalist Malcolm King posted a rather scathing opinion piece on the state of the Australian games industry over at the Courier Mail. Many of the statements made in the piece went against what I know to be true.

If the Internet were an online forum, King's editorial would be considered an excellent attempt at trolling. So it pains me to write a reply, but to have a piece such as this in the open, without rebuttal, would be a disservice.

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Over at his blog, Doolwind, former Auran programmer Alistair Doulin has posted his personal views on the closure of Brisbane-based developer Auran late last year.

There are some intriguing insights into the lead up to Auran's end of days, as well as the company itself. For example, Alistair mentions that Auran had quite a few extremely talented people working for the company that Auran failed to retain:

For me, the first sign that something wasn’t quite right was when one of the star graphics programmers informed Auran he was going to leave if he wasn’t put on something interesting. This guy (while never admitting it himself) was basically Carmack 2.0. He is the kind of person that good companies would give almost anything to have on their team. However, at Auran, they just let him slip away even after giving them a direct option to resolve the problem. The other problem was when the three leads (programming, art and QA) all resigned within a couple of weeks of each other.

Obviously, the blog is based off Doulin's personal observations. If they are to be believed - and I see no reason not to at this stage - they paint a rather damning picture of Auran Developments' upper management. It'd be good to see another insider's perspective on the events that transpired, and we'll do our best here at Kotaku AU to chase it up. Understandably, the topic is still a sensitive one for many.

What Auran Did Wrong [Doolwind's Game Coding Journal]

If you once worked at Auran, but no longer do thanks to last year's unpleasantness, then you might find a new home over at the Canberra-based 2K Australia.

According to Sumea, the studio is welcoming ex-Auran folk to apply for positions at the company - specifically designers, coders and quality assurance people with plenty of experience. 2K Australia's even happy to help out with relocation costs if you're particularly pro. From the story:

We offer relocation assistance for mid-senior candidates and we spoil out staff members with movie nights, daily fruit and subsidised health and gym.

Technically, anyone is free to apply for a position at 2K Australia, but I'm sure the ex-Auran guys appreciate the personalised invite.

2K Australia is Hiring [Sumea]