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Portalarium hit with layoffs
If there's one thing that sucks, badly, about December, it's layoffs. Portalarium, Richard Garriott's social games studio, has been reducing in-house redundancies. Senior programmer Paul Evans broke the news Friday on Twitter, saying that Portalarium "had to lay off people" and that he was one of those people. He also said that "the whole thing was a surprise." Portalarium representatives confirmed to GamesIndustry International that the studio is "reducing staff to the appropriate levels to support and grow [its] recently launched products." As ever, we wish the best to those affected.
Richard Garriott's Portalarium project gets more funding
Portalarium, the social networking startup founded by Richard "Lord British" Garriott, is picking up a bit of momentum thanks to a round of new funding. London-based m8 has contributed an undisclosed amount of capital to Garriott's Austin, Texas studio, which thus far has published two Facebook gambling games (Port Casino Poker and Port Casino Blackjack). Total funding for Portalarium stands at $3.6 million, and the company plans to release CenterPort sometime in 2012. CenterPort is a graphically advanced social networking app that "will be the virtual world social hub for the OpenLife ecosystem, a broad yet fully integrated meta-community," according to the studio's website. Garriott, most famous for the seminal Ultima series (which for MMO gamers peaked with Ultima Online in 1997), launched Portalarium in September 2009.
