Report: Team Bondi sells IP, assets

Team Bondi has reportedly sold its game IP and assets to the Australian production studio Kennedy Miller Mitchell. According to the source, KMM has also offered positions or severance pay to Team Bondi employees.

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Team Bondi has reportedly sold its game IP and assets to Kennedy Miller Mitchell, a multimedia production studio located in Sydney, Australia. This follows on the heels of rumors that Team Bondi has gone bankrupt, as speculation followed a meeting with KMM. The studio behind L.A. Noire hasn't commented publicly on the matter.

An unnamed source told Develop that on top of the IP sale, Team Bondi employees have been offered a choice of new jobs at KMM or severance pay.

Studio founder Brendan McNamara was recently reported to be in talks with KMM, after Rockstar was hesitant to publish the studio's (so far, unannounced) next game. Some members left Team Bondi for KMM on poor terms during the development of L.A. Noire, leading one source to call McNamara's visit "unsettling - to put it mildly."

Though Team Bondi is known for L.A. Noire, that IP is owned by Rockstar and therefore wouldn't become property of KMM. The facial animation technology that put the game on the map was built by Depth Analysis, and is also thought to be unaffected by this potential sale.

In accordance with Australian law, any official sale documents must be shown within 28 days, so it may take a month before we hear confirmation. We'll update as more information becomes available.

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  • reply
    August 9, 2011 10:45 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Report: Team Bondi sells IP, assets.

    Team Bondi has reportedly sold its game IP and assets to the Australian production studio Kennedy Miller Mitchell. According to the source, KMM has also offered positions or severance pay to Team Bondi employees.

    • reply
      August 9, 2011 10:53 AM

      Who's porting the PC version? Hopefully it's not done half assed either.

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        August 9, 2011 10:57 AM

        Rockstar Leeds is doing the port. no word if it will be half assed of full assed.

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          August 9, 2011 11:05 AM

          They're good guys from a mobile background. The PC port is their first if I recall correctly but given solid work recently on Chinatown Wars and others I'd say there's every reason for hope they'll pull it off well. Plus no one gets worked to death in the process.

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            August 13, 2011 10:03 AM

            I'm surprised that after the disaster that was (the initial versions of) the GTAIV port for Windows, they're again going for one of their studios that has no PC experience. If they should've learned anything, it's that console-to-computer conversions are not a task for the unexperienced. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, though, and hope they've got some experts there who know what they're doing.

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      August 9, 2011 10:58 AM

      No real surprised there.

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      August 9, 2011 11:29 AM

      I've seen alot of Team Bondi CV's alot on this side of the globe for the last month.

      Not surprised about this

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      August 9, 2011 11:38 AM

      Assuming that the stories of McNamara's "style" of management are true, this is truly karma biting him in the posterior. I am really sorry for the people who went to KMM to escape him and now are going to be working with him again (albeit we do not know in what capacity yet). Credits are cheap, motivating your team instead of tearing them down, and playing the politician rather than the maverick would have gone a long way. There are times and places for egos, but this was not one of them and now everyone suffers for it.

      • reply
        August 9, 2011 3:02 PM

        ...or is McNamara's management style prevailing in his fiefdom at KMM? We'll have to wait and see.

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