APB will live on in Europe and US

By Robert Purchese Published 19 August, 2010

Future updates and content promised.

APB service will continue as normal in Europe and the US, despite the recent collapse of developer Realtime Worlds.

Administrators have restructured the studio to ensure the game's future, promising a "pipeline" of future updates and game improvements.

A new patch is on the public test server now. This attempts to establish fairer matchmaking results, balance vehicle handling and combat, introduce advanced graphics options, improve HUD messaging, tweak voice communications and add new clothing, symbols, vehicles and instruments.

"We want to offer reassurance to gamers that APB will not only continue as an online service but will be improved and supported 100 per cent during this restructure," commented Paul Dounis, one of the two administrators from Begbies Taylor in charge of RTW.

Administration will continue until someone buys what's left of Realtime Worlds: APB, in other words. Of the 210 workforce at Dundee, Scotland HQ only 53 remain. The US Colorado office has let go of 28 staff, keeping only 14.

Realtime Worlds crumbled earlier this week. Administrators pointed to the "lacklustre" performance of APB as the reason. Creditors in the UK are apparently owed somewhere in the region of £3 million.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ZizouFC #1 2 years ago

    What about the rest of the world? Oh yeah, we don't have the internet in Africa.

    /plays with pet lion while talking in a series of clicks

  • reelbigkris #2 2 years ago

    That ZaizouFC is a stereotype! As mentioned in an earlier post, stereotyping is wrong!

    /Removes pet lion and replaces it with a speech therepy tape by woody allen

  • jumpdeveraux #3 2 years ago

    Given the less than stellar gameplay experience today and the existing paying community being well aware of the studio collapse I don't really see this carrying on for much longer as it just sounds like the soul-less beep of the life support machine.

    Perhaps they should just take the risk and make the game freely downloadable and playable for 14 days to try and rapidly expand the playerbase and hopefully increase subscription take up after the free period is over.

    It's still listed as 26.99 on Play - I really don't see anyone wandering into retail to buy this now if they keep an eye on gaming news (am surprised Play etc aren't heavily discounting already just to dump their stock)

  • rojjer #4 2 years ago

    I don't think too many people are going to carry on or even take up subscriptions with this game now its out that RTW is in trouble unfortunately

  • Weezer #5 2 years ago

    Jeez, go read RTW's Wikipedia entry - total investment to date: $101 million. Christ upon a velocipede.

  • sfp_noodle #6 2 years ago

    I give credit to RTW for trying to support their game and reward the consumers that invested in it. I still can't see this surviving beyond Christmas though.

  • mingster #7 2 years ago

    Yup there is no way they should sell the game as a full priced title.
    The client should be free to download with 7-14 day free trial.
    Then charge £5 per month to play after that.
    Anything else is a rip off.

  • Cider-X #8 2 years ago

    I'm sure all 27 players are delighted with these news.

  • BobsUncle #9 2 years ago

    I spoke to a RTW friend last night and he said APB is currently raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds per month, so it's hardly dead.

  • Crea #10 2 years ago

    Unfortunately RTW's salary bill alone pre-cull was likely seven figures per month, or very close to it. It's logical to assume that the current revenue level covers the remaining staff (around 40 or so on APB), plus a little extra.

  • iamian #11 2 years ago

    As the game was only released in July it would be expected to have a high income for that first month. But if everone leaves and stops playing then you've got a problem...

  • darleysam #12 2 years ago

    Begbies Taylor now? Was being written as Begbies Traynor before.

  • SpaceMonkey77 #13 2 years ago

    Best thing the could do is get in on Steam, offer the source code out, so MODs can be made and the game kept alive. Let users create their own story based missions. Apart from that, only a free to play model could really keep this alive.

  • jumpdeveraux #14 2 years ago

    I guess another key thing is that the whole show is now being run by the administrator... their view isn't in the longevity/resurrection of the game but very short term maximising the financial attractiveness (cutting out as much cost as possible while trying to hold onto revenue in the next few months) so they can find a buyer, collect their fee and head off down the pub.

  • Sunyavadin #15 2 years ago

    Make the game free to play with paid extras, like most MMO providers have been doing since they had to compete with WoW.

    Problem solved.

  • Pastici #16 2 years ago

    That patch seems to address the problems that all reviewers had and that RW claimed were not broken :s.

  • hobojebus #17 2 years ago

    MMO's live and die in the first 3 months, a crappy release like this means it'll never have more than a fringe fanbase.

    Conan mad the same mistakes, as well as outright lying to its customers about features that took 6-12 months to appear.

    It might make just enough money to be semi profitable but like the matrix online that means it'll limp along for a few years at most then die off.

  • abot #18 2 years ago

    This administrator from Begbies Taylor seems to be pretty confident that someone is going to buy RTW - typical corporate talk. All of this is dependent on whether someone buys RTW. There are no guarantees that RTW will be purchased.



  • Moz #19 2 years ago

    Quite simply the game is crap no amount of extra free play is going to change that, either designers took one serious wrong turn in their decisions or underestimated how long and how much money it would take to realise their vision.

  • abot #20 2 years ago

    EA had enough faith in APB to distribute it so why don't they purchase RTW. I don't see EA coming in to rescue RTW. If they are not standing behind it right now then why should anyone purchase RTW.

  • Pinky_Floyd #21 2 years ago

    The clock is ticking for APB. No way on earth I would buy it at the moment.