Codemasters "terminates" Hei$t
Pub's future will be internally-made games.
Codemasters has thrown bank robbery game Hei$t in the bin.
The ramifications of this move are that Codemasters will, by-and-large, no longer publish externally created games. "After a much extended development period, Hei$t has been terminated as a project and removed from our release schedule. Codemasters is focusing its future portfolio on high quality titles that will, in the majority, be developed and produced by our internal studios," read a company statement.
Codemasters' decision comes after external games like Rise of the Argonauts and Damnation scored badly and crashed commercially. Big 2009 successes for the publisher were Ashes Cricket 2009 (external - Transmission Games), DiRT 2 (internal), Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising (internal). Overlord II (external - Triumph Studios) failed to make a significant impact on the UK chart, despite reviewing well.
Hei$t had been in development at inXile Entertainment, maker of spoof RPG The Bard's Tale. Announced in 2007, the game was set in a late sixties San Francisco and would follow a gang of criminals as they hatched bank robbery plans and elaborate getaways.
Noise surrounding the project had been long muted, with nothing heard after the game missed a summer 2008 release.