Full Auto developer shuts down

By Ellie Gibson Published 7 April, 2008

Eidos project cancelled, apparently.

Pseudo Interactive, the studio behind the Full Auto series and last-gen title Cel Damage, has closed its doors.

That's according to a 1UP report and the ever-reliable wikipedia.

Apparently the studio was working on an unnamed game for Eidos. The project was cancelled and Pseudo was unable to secure another deal in time to survive.

As of 2006 the studio employed more than 50 people, but 1UP reports many of them were made redundant before the closure.

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About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • dadrester #1 4 years ago

    :(

    poor sods. hope there's some phoenix studio in the pipeline or other studios to take on the staff. always a fucker when this kind of thing happens, even if you didn't particularly like their output.

  • The-Bodybuilder #2 4 years ago

    Sad

  • alimokrane #3 4 years ago

    All the best to the poor employees :(

  • zedzee #4 4 years ago

    I don't know how these developers attempt to survive like this...hand to mouth and if something goes slightly skewed, that's it! They go bust!!

    Do they not plan ahead?

    I do feel sorry for the employees and I do hope that their talents are recognised in the industry elsewhere and indeed to all those who are not in the industry and just performed 'normal' jobs at the company.

    I've been made redundant twice and it's not pretty...

  • Zomoniac #5 4 years ago

    That's sad. To be honest I thought Full Auto was unfairly slammed. Yes the demo was rubbish and there were framerate issues but I enjoyed it a lot more than the overrated and dull as fuck Burnout Revenge.

  • SBfistfun #6 4 years ago

    I don't know how these developers attempt to survive like this...hand to mouth and if something goes slightly skewed, that's it! They go bust!!

    Could be worse, ass to mouth is worse, so I've heard

  • muscleblade #7 4 years ago

    @Zomoniac

    Really!! BurnOut Revenge is the best racer i have ever played. Never played Full Auto but i always considered it to be really bad and i tried the demo of course wich was utter shit.

  • Darren #8 4 years ago

    Full Auto on the Xbox 360 was awful, spoilt by the dreadful framerate (and, yes, I owned the actual game). The PS3 "sequel", Full Auto 2, was much better in that regard, running and looking better than the Xbox 360 version even at 1080p (which is quite an achievement when the Xbox 360 version struggled at 720p) but it still didn't change the fact that the game itself was a bit mindless and shallow. Fun to play for the odd 10 minutes though.

  • jlaakso #9 4 years ago

    Since many small to medium studios are only handling one project at a time you tend to be screwed if it gets canceled. There have been so many closures and buy-outs recently that you can't attribute bad management to all of the cases. It's just a real hard problem to survive between projects. With obviously the target being to never be between projects.

  • rhubarbandcustard #10 4 years ago

    Once the coming credit and financial market crisis hits there will be lots more studios, and many people on these forums, affected by job losses. The age of the £40 videogame ends this year. 2009 games will cost £20 maximum to those of us who are still in employment. Be afraid people. Life is going to become pretty damn hard.

    On a more positive note - three weeks til GTA4. Come on!

  • Eraysor #11 4 years ago

    Maybe if they hadn't made Full Auto 2 only on the PS3 they might have survived. Unless the only way to keep the framerate up was to have it on the PS3...

  • riz23 #12 4 years ago

    Actually I think it's been shown that when credit and finances are tight, spending on games goes up. People are not going out they are staying at home y'see.

  • Zomoniac #13 4 years ago

    @ muscleblade

    I 99% finished Burnout 3 (damn F1 challenge) and loved every second. A perfect game. But with Revenge, aside from the stupid decision to make the whole game brown and orange, they took away the whole point of the game, the complete rush of fear and utter exhiliration that came from hitting full speed and having to avoid all the traffic with lightning reflexes. It was just one head rush after another. Then they put in traffic checking and suddenly there was no need to avoid the cars. And everything that made the game good just vanished. It was brown and boring. And (and I know I'm alone in this) I much preferred crash junctions with multipliers.

  • miiiguel #14 4 years ago

    "Then they put in traffic checking and suddenly there was no need to avoid the cars."
    Try to do the race events in Dominator class by "traffic checking" and then tell me if you succeeded...
    Edited by 1 at 07/04/08 @ 12:35

  • SimonM7 #15 4 years ago

    I thought Full Auto 1 was lots of fun despite its issues and Full Auto 2 was a wonderful opportunity to just FIX those issues.

    Instead they essentially put out an inferior product with cleaned up framerate and castrated multiplayer options. Way to shoot yourself in the foot. :/

    Nevertheless it's heartbreaking to see people go into this with lots of enthusiasm only to run out of steam and disappear.

  • WinterSnowblind #16 4 years ago

    I have to say, they deserved this. They blamed 360 owners for not "appreciating" their game and vowed not to release anymore of their games on the 360, seemingly completely unaware of the fact the reason the game didn't sell was because it was completely garbage. They then made the sequel exclusively for the Playstation, where it sold equally terribly.

    Perhaps instead of being so arrogant and assuming it was the owners of the system that were at fault, and just acknowleged that they were releasing crappy games, they might still be going.

  • homerramone #17 4 years ago

    Well I loved FA on the 360. I briefly tried FA2 on the PS3 and quickly realised why there was no 360 release. Cos it was essentially the same game on ps3 !

    Maybe it wasnt technically excellent, and yes there were problems with the framerate (at what fucking point did problems stop bieng problems and become issues ? Call a spade a spade godammit) but the bottom line is that it was fun to play both on and offline.

    As for burnout revenge. Utter shite. I kept this a whole week before it went to the big trade in shop in the sky. All the cool stuff has been slowly removed from the burnout series with each new version.

  • Ryze #18 4 years ago

    Good - they became shit. Farewell to dead weight, and the talented members will be fine...
    Edited by 1 at 07/04/08 @ 17:32

  • Davemanz #19 4 years ago

    If "Cel Damage" was "last-gen", does that mean we can stop referring to current-gen and "next-gen"?

  • FooAtari #20 4 years ago

    It's sad when smaller studios shut down. But I have to agree with other that said FA was a bit crap... Im sure the talented developers will be fine and will soon find jobs elsewhere.