Report: Whore of the Orient studio shut down

The future of Whore of the Orient is in doubt, following reports of layoffs at KMM.

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The future is uncertain for Whore of the Orient, the next game from LA Noire developer Team Bondi. Kennedy Mitchell Miller (KMM) absorbed the staff of Team Bondi, but has now reportedly shut down the division making the game and laid off much of the staff, leaving the game adrift.

Sources at MCV Pacific, and Kotaku, and Player Attack (via Joystiq) all claim that the project has been shuttered. Meanwhile, Superannuation found a now-deleted blog post from someone claiming to be the partner of a KMM staff member.

GI.biz saved pieces of the blog post before it was deleted. "Our departure from Sydney was not a happy one: [Her partner] had been made redundant by KMMIE as they had recently lost their publisher Warner Bros," it read. "We had only been there for a few weeks and had just signed for an apartment, decorated the place and made ourselves comfortable before they hit us with the bad news. [His] final working day was to be the 21st of December, right before Christmas. Any new deal with a new publisher would come too late (expected: April)."

The team did recently advertise for a lead programmer, which raises questions about the project's current status. But as Kotaku points out, a KMM representative was only willing to confirm that the company itself is still running, and did not comment on the status of its games division.

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