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Rumor: Ignition lays off UK employees, cancels WarDevil again
Ignition Games' transition to a pure publishing operation continues, Develop reports, with layoffs at the company's London studio following those last week in Austin. Anonymous sources told the site that the London team was told of the layoffs on Friday. As Develop puts it, "redundancies have been issued across the entire London development outfit." This once again brings work on WarDevil to a halt. The game was canceled last year following an earlier round of layoffs in Ignition's UK operation. Development started again later that year under the name Project Kane. Develop was unable to confirm this, but heard reports that Ignition was willing to let the project continue if an external developer signed on to complete it. This accompanies rumors that Ignition's Japan studio will close following completion of its latest project -- which, as far as we can tell, would be any work involved with the localization of El Shaddai.
WarDevil not canceled after all, will now live on as 'Project Kane'
Ignition has decided against canceling WarDevil, a game that has been in development at the publisher's London studio for five years now, despite earlier reports to the contrary. Instead, the game will live on under the title "Project Kane" -- a title to which we've heard references before. WarDevil and Project Kane are now combined into one project at the London studio, with a projected launch date of Q4 2011. The London studio was to be shuttered back in September, but Ignition changed its mind the next month. The studio lives on and will continue developing the game under its new title. Ignition was also forced to shutter its Florida office this month, which was knee-deep in development of a sci-fi FPS called Reich.
Ignition shutting down London studio, fate of WarDevil under evaluation
Ignition Entertainment is in the process of shutting down its west London development studio, reports GamesIndustry.biz. The closure will result in an unspecified number of layoffs, and stalls the progress of WarDevil and another project, uh, Project Kane. The studio is expected to officially close on October 31. Formerly known as Digi-Guys, the Ignition London studio, located in Ealing, has been toiling over various incarnations of WarDevil for years. A "WarDevil: Unleash the Beast Within" demo was first shown at TGS ... 2005. The last update on the game dates back to roughly a year ago, when Edge magazine toured the studio and saw two tech demos (one on the original Xbox!). According to Ignition group chairman Hassan Sadiq, the mysterious WarDevil and the even more mysterious Project Kane just passed new, six-month proof-of-concept phases, and "the board and studio management are currently evaluating [...] whether the required quality will be achieved by completing internally or with an external partner." Ignitiion, which was acquired by Indian media conglomerate UTV in 2007, will continue to operate its corporate headquarters out of London, with a focus on publishing; though Sadiq assured that projects underway at Ignition's other studios in Austin, Gainesville (Fla.), Beijing and Tokyo (where the intriguing action game El Shaddai is in development) are "ramping up." The company's most recent release was Zombie Studios' Blacklight: Tango Down, a downloadable mutliplayer FPS.
