007 Legends developer lays off remaining staff

English developer Eurocom laid off a whopping 150 staff in November after several console projects fell through. The The maker of 007 Legends and Harry Potter for Kinect brought in administrators to help seek profitability and planned a shift to mobile, but it wasn't enough. Today it made the remaining 42 employees redundant and ceased trading, after 24 years in the business.

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English developer Eurocom laid off a whopping 150 staff in November after several console projects fell through. The The maker of 007 Legends and Harry Potter for Kinect brought in administrators to help seek profitability and planned a shift to mobile, but it wasn't enough. Today it made the remaining 42 employees redundant and ceased trading, after 24 years in games.

"The Administrator and the company's directors have been negotiating with customers surrounding new contracts to develop console games, however these contracts could not be secured in time and due to insufficient funds to pay outstanding wages, Eurocom today entered Administration," says a statement statement provided to Eurogamer.

Eurocom blames what it calls a "steep decline" in game sales since 2008, which it says has caused a "severe contraction" in the number of new commissions from publishers. "The company has also faced intense competition from developers in countries with lower costs or those subsidised with generous games tax credits," it says. The British government this week confirmed plans to go ahead with tax breaks for the games industry, but it's not happening soon enough for some.

Eurocom's bread and butter was adaptations of licensed properties, but most have reviewed poorly. The Wii U edition of 007 Legends launches next week.

"The Directors of Eurocom would like to offer their heartfelt thanks to all their staff that have been made redundant at this difficult time, and show their appreciation of all of their hard work in consistently delivering exceptional games," the statement offers.

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  • reply
    December 7, 2012 7:15 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, 007 Legends developer lays off remaining staff.

    English developer Eurocom laid off a whopping 150 staff in November after several console projects fell through. The The maker of 007 Legends and Harry Potter for Kinect brought in administrators to help seek profitability and planned a shift to mobile, but it wasn't enough. Today it made the remaining 42 employees redundant and ceased trading, after 24 years in the business.

    • reply
      December 7, 2012 7:22 AM

      [deleted]

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        December 7, 2012 7:46 AM

        Something ala Alpha Protocol with maybe a bigger emphasis on what happens between would really fit a 007 license I think.

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        December 7, 2012 8:47 AM

        Whoever gets the 007 license is condemned to pumping out one game per year. Activision got the license after EA lost it. The last 3 years were Blood Stone and GoldenEye Wii in 2010, a remake of the Wii GoldenEye on 360 and PS3 in 2011, and 007 Legends in 2012. The two studios that made those games (Bizarre Creations and Eurocom) are dust now. Treyarch used to make 007 licensed games, but ran away from that to concentrate on Call of Duty.

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      December 7, 2012 7:42 AM

      Hope everyone lands on their feet but I feel nothing of value was lost here.

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      December 7, 2012 7:54 AM

      Actually ever since we have had this new bond, all the bond movies actually DO make him out to be a murdering psycho. Far from flemings original vision. They can take any bond movie made with daniel craig and shove it up their ass.

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        December 7, 2012 3:07 PM

        Actually I'd say Brosnan's is more of a murdering psycho than Craig's. Compare how many people Brosnan's Bond has killed compared to Craig's. Brosnan killed more people in Goldeneye than all of Craig's movies. It's just that Craig's Bond is more of a brute.

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      December 7, 2012 8:06 AM

      Bond: 2 for 2. Which developer gets killed next. I hear Raven is making the next one.

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        December 7, 2012 8:56 AM

        Raven also has Call of Duty to work on, so they won't be putting themselves at that much risk. When a studio's only project is a Bond game, THAT'S the death knell. That's what killed off Bizarre and Eurocom.

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      December 7, 2012 8:53 AM

      Booo hooo, well deserved layoffs for a terrible game. Sorry guys if you can't make games maybe you should be doing something else. This game offered nothing but a boring extremely average shooter with the 007 name attached to it. I wish developers wouldn't be scared to think outside the box and make something that could be amazing...

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        December 7, 2012 8:56 AM

        it's often not the developers who are at fault.

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        December 7, 2012 9:04 AM

        It's hard to do that when you only have a year after your last game's release to hit a movie tie-in drop-dead release date. I imagine there were other factors, but being trapped on a yearly AAA console game license is a dinosaur of a concept. I wish that MGM would stop trying to license Bond games, or just go to iPhone throwaway advergames so these devs can spend 3+ years to make something of better quality.

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        December 7, 2012 9:17 AM

        Oh fuck off, you have no fucking idea what the fuck goes on. There's no way all 150 people deserved to lose their jobs for the poor decisions of their leadership and most likely shitty directives from the publishers.

        Everyday designers, artists, coders, etc, have zero fucking power over what the work on usually not even how they do the work.

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        December 7, 2012 10:21 AM

        It's assholes like you that keep buying call of duty and don't have a fucking clue what it takes to make a really great game.

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          December 7, 2012 10:58 AM

          Oh stfu.

          007 Legend wasn't a good game. That's the bottomline.

          I'd shed a tear if they were Looking Glass.

          But they weren't.

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            December 7, 2012 10:59 AM

            Blame the publishers and management then and not the people that coded and made the game others told them to.

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            December 18, 2012 2:48 PM

            Um noo dick, the bottom line is the world is not black and white. Often it's the publisher's fault for a poor game, not the dev. Come back to reality.

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        December 7, 2012 10:59 AM

        way to have compassion for people.

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        December 7, 2012 11:11 AM

        [deleted]

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      December 7, 2012 11:08 AM

      They can't really use the term "made redundant" if they're laying off the entire staff. That sucks for them.

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