Blue Omega Employees Laid Off

Damnation

If a studio already has pre-existing issues, it needs to produce a gem in order to stay alive. But when they fall well short, as was the case with Blue Omega's Damnation, that can close the doors for good (pun intended).

According to Develop and citing a recent Tweet by Blue Omega Entertainment programmer Geoff Rowland, the entire staff has been laid off. This officially happened Friday, and Blue Omega confirmed the unfortunate news with Kotaku, further explaining that the team had had former "issues" with Damnation publisher Codemasters. These issues led to a number of lawsuits between the two feuding companies and when the aforementioned game failed to impress critics and consumers alike, that was the last straw. As one added tidbit of information, Blue Omega was also responsible for producing several B-movie horror flicks including "Danika" and "Dark Ride." In the end, the quality of their work wasn't good enough to combat the outside influences weighing down upon them, and now, Blue Omega is no more. We often hear about studios making a gazillion dollars after hitting the jackpot with titles like Grand Theft Auto IV, but in this ultra-competitive marketplace, and with development costs so high, endeavoring to create a video game can be a very risky proposition. Well, unless you're EA or Activision, who can easily survive poor efforts every now and then.

We never like to see game developers go under, but hey, it's part of the daily news. Hopefully, the ex-Blue Omega guys can find positions elsewhere.

Related Game(s): Damnation

7/1/2009 Ben Dutka

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