Free Radical, I knew thee well

This morning, designers, codemonkeys and coffeeboys arrived at a Nottingham, England workplace to find locked doors. They retired to a nearby Holiday Inn and leaked the news to the internets: Free Radical had just gone tits-up.

Kotaku confirms that a meeting later in the day ended with the independent studio’s disbandment. This doesn’t seem to be a favorable climate for indie developers – even studios like Ensemble, supposedly under the aegis of Microsoft, are capsizing.

The blogosphere wasted no time in pinning the blame on Haze, FR’s latest FPS, which arrived to sneering reviews and poor sales. Kotaku speculates Lucasarts may have reneged on a new Battlefront game, turning economic forecasts from bleak to black.

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