UK dev THQ Digital Warrington closes

By Robert Purchese Published 13 July, 2011

36 staff are made redundant - report.

The THQ UK development team earmarked for closure - THQ Digital Warrington - will now absolutely definitely be shut down.

Develop reports that 36 people will be made redundant immediately. A core team of 10 will remain to launch the studio's last project, Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team, which is due for release on Xbox Live Arcade today. The PSN release didn't happen in Europe or the US this week.

THQ Digital Warrington also created Red Faction offshoot Red Faction: Battlegrounds.

The studio was once called Juice Games and was responsible for decent street racing series Juiced. THQ acquired the studio and realigned its destiny in 2007 after the release of Juiced 2. THQ Digital Warrington, as it was to be known, was to focus on digital games.

But that all went sour after the lacklustre critical and commercial performance of Red Faction: Battlegrounds. The next project after Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team, which took only 10 months to make, may have been a downloadable version of Juiced. That's what a THQ Digital Warrington insider suggested to Eurogamer.

The source's gagging order regarding the downloadable Juiced game suggested that THQ still intends to use that project in some way and at some point.

From the ashes of THQ Digital Warrington will form three start-up companies - two of which will be game developers: D3T, a three man operation, and another studio the name of which is under wraps while the "t"s are crossed and the "I"s are dotted.

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 (16) Latest comment 11 months ago

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

  • chaywa #1 11 months ago

    And another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust...

  • riceNpea #2 11 months ago

    THQ give their dev teams unrealistic schedules and deadlines. after Homefront THQ can kiss my ass.

  • Gearskin #3 11 months ago

    I wonder if the people on these teams see themselves as working a short term? I mean, it wasn't a great number of people. When my company made people redundant, hundreds lost their jobs.
    Perhaps they expect it? The 40k DL game looks... Alright.

  • DDevil #4 11 months ago

    Another dev in the Liverpool area. How sad.

  • Stifler #5 11 months ago

    I enjoyed the first Juiced. Sad to see another developer go :(

  • Softie2k #6 11 months ago

    I've said it before and I'll say it again, the UK is overhyped when it comes to games development. We make racers, the Total War series and quirky games with shite graphics.

    We USED to be a power house. Amiga gaming springs to mind immediately.

  • S0L #7 11 months ago

    @Softie2K

    That's a bit harsh to be fair. When you look at all the UK powerhouses of yore you are probably thinking about, they all got acquired and then dropped or ruined by external forces. Take Ocean or Gremlin, successful studios picked up and then closed by Infogrames.

    More recently you have to question around someone like Bizarre, if they went through lack of ability, or through the choice of
    project and it's commercial viability, no doubt some of which was dictated to them.

    The UK does still have some of the best development talent in the world.

    Still, this doesn't help the Warrington chaps, I hope they all find this a bump in the road and go on to do greater things.

    ---
    S0L
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  • Peter_LIAR_Molyneux #8 11 months ago

    Makes you wonder if the reason so many games get delayed is because the development team knows that as soon as the game goes gold they are getting sacked. Who wants to bust their humps and work 110 hours per week during crunch when it only brings you closer to unemployment?

    I'm done with THQ for now. They went on and on about how well Homefront turned out and more importantly how well it sold and the result was closing down the studio. THQ wants to hang with the big boys and they seem to be fitting right in by keeping up with EA and Activision when it comes to destroying developers.

  • Baranga #9 11 months ago

    Kaos was doomed because it was a New York studio. The costs to maintain it were astronomical, and they also shipped two mediocre, expensive games after long development times. THQ's marketing is responsible for Homefront's sales, not the talent at Kaos.
    Edited by Baranga at 13/07/11 @ 19:47

  • BonzoBanana #10 11 months ago

    Sadly the uk developers seem to be reliant on foreign management/publishers. Developer's seem to be eager to sell to foreign firms to make millions of personal wealth but then often foreign ownership doesn't really know how to exploit the talent of these developers and end up closing them sometime down the line. Sometimes its sad to see a developer coming out with an uninspired game that no one would want. If only they'd thought more about the project at the beginning they could have put the same amount of effort into a great game that made them loads of money.

  • chris_ace #11 11 months ago

    Post deleted at 11:55:13 13-12-2011

  • 32768Colours #12 11 months ago

    I live in Warrington, and one of my mates used to work for Digital Image Design before it became Rage, then Juice Games and finally THQ Digital.

    He left after the buyout by Rage because I don't think he was very impressed with Infogrames.

    Basically, in one form or another, the developer has travelled a rather rocky road for ages. Its inevitable that like Juice, new start-ups will form from the ashes of THQ Digital. The real problem is that the government needs to get its act together and start giving tax breaks to UK developers because otherwise, this kind of thing will just keep happening.
    Edited by 32768Colours at 13/07/11 @ 22:28

  • metalangel #13 11 months ago

    @Baranga: you could also argue that Homefront's design is down to THQ wanting to match CoD, and the fact it turned out well regardless is down to Kaos' talent as a dev making the most of a very restrictive mandate.

  • jimr9999us #14 11 months ago

    THQ gives dev's tons of room...look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for example. But asking a AAA racing dev to become a social shooter dev???
    That seems like a recipe for fail.

    Btw, how many game dev's are left in the UK now? Y'all are going to be to games exports like the bbc is to tv exports y'all keep this up;)

  • taurus82 #15 11 months ago

    "The PSN release didn't happen in Europe or the US this week."

    But is it still going to happen?!

  • Eraysor #16 11 months ago

    @jimr: the 3rd Stalker (Call of Pripyat) wasn't THQ published though. My copy wasn't anyway.