Midway confirms Newcastle studio closure

By Games Industry.biz Published 15 July, 2009

Necessary Force canned for now.

Midway Games has confirmed it has closed its Newcastle studio, recently responsible for Wheelman, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

Along with the publisher's team in San Diego, the studio was not included in the USD 33 million sale of assets to Warner Bros, completed this month.

"We can confirm that we closed the Newcastle studio unfortunately," said Geoff Mogilner, head of corporate communications at Midway, speaking to Gamasutra. “We had a period of time that was required by UK law to notify the employees of the pending studio closure."

"During that time, we made every effort to find a buyer for the studio, and we were unfortunately unsuccessful at that. Today was when we had to close the studio."

The studio was working on action game Necessary Force, and the rights to the game are still held by Midway Games, although the company is undecided on the future of the project.

"It is for sale potentially, but we have not decided what we're going to do with that intellectual property," added Mogilner.

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Comments (7) Latest comment 3 years ago

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

  • chicknstu #1 3 years ago

    Shit. good luck guys.

  • Ziggy_badMonkey #2 3 years ago

    Looking at the thread on the Develop site it seems as if the Newcastle staff have been screwed in the pay dept.
    Promises made and broken and now 80 staff out of work with no pay and no redundancy.
    I guarantee the management of Midaway are walking away with a nice chunk of change, shame that the developers who actually do the work get screwed.
    Same old same old
    One hopes that one day the industry will mature and make sure that staff are treated properly, it does happen at some developers just not all : (

  • Linkified #3 3 years ago

    The North Tech promise could of come in and saved these guys howver midway probably wanted Necessary Force to sell on to pay back their debts.

  • Embra #4 3 years ago

    Yeah. The guys there are owed money, it seems, while the company walks off with the game IP. Lovely. At least the folks in the UK will get some money through various government protection schemes, even if it will take ages to sort out. Feel sorry for the US teams who have no such protection.

  • Ziggy_badMonkey #5 3 years ago

    "various government protection schemes, even if it will take ages to sort out"

    Yeah the people concerned will get "some" money from the government scheme but its capped and the pay outs will nowhere near match what you were owed.
    If its down the liquidation route (as a creditor) you will be waiting years.
    I recently got a cheque from a studio i worked at over 5 years ago !
    Here's hoping that Ubisoft Reflections take on most of the staff, kinda ironic as the set up at Midway Newcastle was created by people pissed off at Reflections ; 0

  • KillerMonkey #6 3 years ago

    I assume the necessary force was taken to .....

    I can't do it :(

  • Baranga #7 3 years ago

    Well, crap. I enjoyed Wheelman, it was good arcade fun.