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Rockstar Vienna Closes Its Doors

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tough-year dept.

slashflood writes "Rockstar has unexpectedly closed its Rockstar Vienna development office, particularly known for its Grand Theft Auto Xbox conversion, laying off more than 100 employees. Confirmation has come in the form of a weblog post by Rockstar Vienna employee Jurie Horneman: 'This morning, as I came into work, I was greeted by security guards. It turned out Take-Two has closed their Rockstar Vienna office, effective immediately, 'due to the challenging environment facing the video game business and our Company during this platform transition'.'"

3 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Jack wins? by Kerr · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Does this means that Jack Thompson eventually won? That can't be good...


    Take2 opened another studio a few days ago, and Rockstar Vienna ported GTA to xbox, they didn't create it.
    I don't think Jack won, I think Take 2's shareholders won, when they decided to drop Vienna for cheap labour in shanghai.
    --
    Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal. -- Zaphod Beeblebrox
  2. Re:Not such a hasty layoff. by Sparr0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That all relies on actually being able to GET unemployment benefits. I have tried to apply for unemployment benefits twice in my life. The first time I found a new job before they could start (hooray). The second time, Tennessee had changed to a phone-based application system, and the phone system had NO HOLD QUEUE. I called 4-8 times a day every day for a month (the application window) and got either a busy signal, an "all operators are busy, try again later. CLICK" hangup, or a "our normal business hours are..." message if i messed up and called after 5 PM. I can see how this is advantageous to the government, as it saves money in unemployment payments AND lets them lie about unemployment rates even more than usual. But it sucked for me.

  3. Re:No more Max Payne? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    RockStar is the last company in the game industry that needs to be laying off employees, particularly employees that contribute to so many award winning games...

    Well ... No, most of the major developers and publishers will be consolidating development resources in the comming generation; this isn't because they're losing a lot of money (currently) but in order to create the visuals for the PS3/XBox 360 you require many more artists. This is the reality that Sony and Microsoft (and much of the press) has glossed over in this generation switch; game development has gone from $2 Million-$8Million in the current generation (Gamecube, PS2, XBox) to $8 Million - $30 Million on the (PS3, XBox 360; the Wii's development costs have increased at a more modest rate).

    If you're rockstar and you spent $10 Million (to pick a number) creating Grand Theft Auto 3, and you're now creating Grand Theft Auto 4 for $40 Million you can no longer afford to have 4 or 5 different development teams.