Incredibly Realistic Sad Face: Team Bondi Might be “Bankrupt”
While L.A. Noire may have been a critical and commercial hit for publisher Rockstar, an elongated development and generally poor mismanagement has cost developer Team Bondi dearly. With allegations of horrendous work conditions and the dishonest practice of excluding developer’s names from the game’s credits, the developer has had a hard time finding a new publisher and so may have gone bankrupt.
According to several NeoGAF posts, “Team Bondi are now bankrupt”, and “the remaining staff [will] be bought by KMM, including Brendan McNamara who was instrumental in sealing the deal.” This ties neatly into recent rumors that Brendan was seen at the Happy Feet-producing studio the other day, although it won’t come as good news to the developers who previously left Team Bondi for KMM due to Brendan’s work ethic.
In addition, Depth Analysis – the sister company who own the fantastic facial tech that everybody raves about – “are also in some trouble” because they didn’t make much money off of L.A. Noire.
As Rockstar owns the IP to L.A. Noire, any sequels made would have to come from another developer, rather than whatever is left of Team Bondi after the buyout.
11 Responses to “Incredibly Realistic Sad Face: Team Bondi Might be “Bankrupt””
Eh. Had they stuck with Sony the game wouldn’t have been as good but Sony would’ve bought them.
Er, had Sony stuck with them? I don’t know the ins and outs of the deal.
not a big deal
LA Noire was different for sure, but not memorable
any sequel would be milking it
Team Bondi sounded like they having trouble but surely can’t Rockstar just fire Brendon McNamara and replace him with someone else.
Rockstar only entered into a publishing deal with Team Bondi – so they couldn’t fire him from the company he owns. Which is a shame, because he seems to be the root of all the problems.
Really? It sucks that everyone else have to suffer because of one idiot. Can’t they just mutiny and kick him off then run back and kiss Rockstar’s feet till they forgive them for ever having such an idiot in charge.
It’s annoying because this is the first big title for the australian games companies and it has a development team led by what sounds like the biggest moron in the games industry.
That’s surprising. I would think that as well as LA Noire sold, they’d be rolling in money. Apparently not though.
I think you meant to say “Incredibly realistic, but very repetitive, and not at all innovative other than in its realism, sad face.”
That’s too bad, it did a lot of things right. A beautiful and accurate construction of LA around 1947, interesting blend of adventure games and open-world and of course some bad. A sequel could have fixed many of those problems but looks like it won’t be happening and that face tech may never resurface either.
That’s to bad, I really enjoyed that game and wouldn’t had minded seeing more.
That’s very Surprising to be honest. I thought they would have made bank with a game that created such innovation.