Yesterday, the Internet was abuzz with rumours about Free Radical Design closing its doors, with various sources reporting that the staff were locked out of Free Radical’s offices.

First came the rumors that Free Radical was no more, and then Spong ran a rather terse quote from Haze writer Rob Yescombe denying that Free Radical was dead. None of the senior staff were talking to anyone, and the Internet was left to speculate without many hard facts.

Smashpad talked to a source at Free Radical, who would only speak to us under the condition of anonymity. He said:

“We turned up for work as normal, but the offices were all locked. We were told to go down the road to a hotel, where Steve [Ellis] told us to go home.”

Today, Spong is reporting that Free Radical is in administration, but isn’t actually dead yet, and is in fact “in better shape than it’s been for some time.”

When asked about that, our source said:

“I don’t know about that, but I do know there’ve been problems since Haze was released. Lucasarts weren’t too happy with progress [FRD were working on an unannounced game believed to be Star Wars Battlefront III], and a bunch of people were made redundant. Then we were asked for game ideas that were quick and cheap to make, and there was talk of re-doing some of our old games for Xbox Live or PSN. Coming after Haze’s failure and with Lucasarts being unhappy, there was definitely a feeling that things weren’t going well. Then 90% of our QA were laid off suddenly, as well as some other people. We kept getting reassurances that everything was fine, but we didn’t believe it.”

The reassurances that Free Radical’s staff were given mirror Steve Ellis’s assertions last month that nothing was amiss at Free Radical, claiming that the company wasn’t going to make anyone redundant any time soon, and that any developments were likely to be positive.

Our source continued:

“After that, a bunch of key people left, and the outlook definitely wasn’t looking good. As far as I’m aware, no-one’s been made redundant yet, but I’m certainly looking for another job, and I’m pretty sure everyone else is, too.”

The other major rumors coming out of yesterday’s story are that Steve Ellis has set up a new development studio, called Pumpkin Beach, and has taken around 20 ex-Free Radical staffers with him; and that Lucasarts took the unannounced game away from Free Radical several months ago, and gave it to Rebellion.

We asked our source about these rumors, and were told:

“Pumpkin Beach was set up a few months ago actually. The project was worked on in-house at FRD for a while. Then we were told that because the project was going to be quite different from Free Radical’s previous games, they were setting up a new company, sort of a new label for the game, to avoid the associations with TimeSplitters and Haze. As for the Lucasarts thing, I’m not sure that’s entirely true. I know I was working on the Lucasarts game until very recently.”

Unfortunately, our source refused to be drawn any further on whether Lucasarts has given the game to Rebellion, and if so, when. So, currently, the situation is that although Free Radical isn’t officially closed, most of the staff aren’t working, and with the company in administration, things certainly don’t seem to be very hopeful.

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2. Free Radical to Close?
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About This Author: Michael Bunning

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