Prototype Developer Radical Entertainment All But Shutting Down

The team that created the Prototype franchise, Radical Entertainment, is facing “significant” layoffs today that mean that the developer will no longer work on its own games.

Parent company Activision – who have raked in huge profits from Call of Duty, Call of Duty: Elite, World of Warcraft and this year’s best selling title, Skylanders –  announced that Prototype wasn’t successful enough to warrant any more entries in the series. Activision also didn’t think that the studio, which has a 32-year history, would be profitable making other titles outside of the Prototype IP.

Although we made a substantial investment in the Prototype IP, it did not find a broad commercial audience. Radical is a very talented team of developers, however, we have explored various options for the studio, including a potential sale of the business, and have made a difficult conclusion through the consultation process that the only remaining option is a significant reduction in staff. As such, some employees will remain working for Radical Entertainment supporting other existing Activision Publishing projects, but the studio will cease development of its own games going forward.

The publisher confirmed to Joystiq that “approximately 89 employees or less than 1.5% of our global workforce will be impacted,”  and there will be some employees left who will assist with other projects at Activision.

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