Reality Pump - Goes Bankrupt

Bad news from Poland: Reality Pump had to close. GamePressure.com has all the details.

Reality Pump, studio operating since the mid-nineties in Kraków, Poland, whose portfolio includes games such as Earth 21xx and Two Worlds, was forced to close down. Most of its remaining employees moved to another Kraków-based developer, Bloober Team.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Turjan!

More information.

I honestly can't say I'm that surprised. Their games always struck me as 'almost, but not quite'. They had ambition, but apparently lacked the skills and/or resources to carry it out.

For a time, I'll stick to words by Reality Pump employee who says it (at least not all of it) ain't true.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/281130/discussions/0/620703493333145653/#c620712999971477050

Raidor [dph] [developer] 7 hours ago

The development of Patches and an enhanced version of Raven's Cry will be done as I said in this forum. Articles from stupid editors, who even did not research any word they write, have no influence to the development.

Click to expand...

I liked the Two Worlds games. Hope their talent won't go to waste in the future.

Small studios can't make complete stinker games and try to sell them for $55.

A pity. I liked the first Two Worlds and the second game had its moments, too.

The way the devs are rebelling against the reviews instead of learning from them, though... best it ends now.

That's too bad I like the Two Worlds games but I haven't played any of their other ones.

joxer said:

For a time, I'll stick to words by Reality Pump employee who says it (at least not all of it) ain't true.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/281130/discussions/0/620703493333145653/#c620712999971477050

Click to expand...

He isn't from Reality Pump. Topware management.

Zloth said:

Small studios can't make complete stinker games and try to sell them for $55.

A pity. I liked the first Two Worlds and the second game had its moments, too.

The way the devs are rebelling against the reviews instead of learning from them, though… best it ends now.

Click to expand...

I only found out about Two Worlds (1) maybe 2-3 years ago and had a lot of fun playing it, I remember being quite impressed by this "old" game I'd never heard of.

Was pretty shocked I had never heard of or just not taken note of it since it had so many similarities to Oblivion and came out less than a year after. It's not as good as Oblivion and sure isn't a Great game, but it felt like it was from a much smaller and limited developer who was very ambitious and over reaching but somehow managing to hold it together in the end. Perhaps the lack of hype or any fandom made it easy to forgive and overlook it's many flaws and bugs though I do remember some being inexcusable, still remember it fondly.

Then I tried Two Worlds 2 when it came out, couldn't stand it, tried it again later on still couldn't stand it, it was infuriating and seemed nothing like the original. I consider it a waste of hard drive space.

Thinking of it now, I can't help but wonder how different things might have been if with Two Worlds 1, they embraced modding as much as something like The Elder Scrolls and it had taken off with a modding community.

Honestly Two Worlds 1 and 2 were horrible games, I couldn't stand them.

I think their old "Earth" series of RTS were okay, but I think this studio could never make great games, and in this era or mega budgets it won't cut it.

I enjoyed Two Worlds 2. But it really had it's problems. The combat was unbalanced and Magic far superior to Melee. Also in the first part of the game they tried to make it open world which did not work at all. But as soon as it became more or less linear it started being fun, mainly because I loved the voice of the protagonist and the extremely dry humor which he used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JnLiaH_id8

I still have a soft spot for the first Two Worlds. The second? Not so much.

No strafing and backpedalling ruined Tw2 for me. Trying to dodge or run away got you a sword in the back. Had potential otherwise but I regret picking it up at all just because of that.

Gorath said:

He isn't from Reality Pump. Topware management.

Click to expand...

In principle, Topware is the owner, so they should know. They gave an update:

Following this morning’s report, TopWare replied to our queries to reassure us that Reality Pump has not, in fact, been closed. According to a representative, Reality Pump is divided into multiple business units, and just one of these has applied for the local equivalent of chapter 11. This has been widely misinterpreted as the entire studio closing.

“We see this more as a restructuring as it happens from time to time,” TopWare told us.

Click to expand...

Source

However, the language is still not clear. Whether you have the whole studio go into bankruptcy or divide it up into different units with one unit declaring bankruptcy, the result is that the original studio is no more. But hey, maybe they tell us something more substantial one day instead of a vague "we see this more as…".

The language is pretty clear to me. Another example?

The news were "EA closed Maxis earlier this year". The shitstorm started among Sims community so they had to clear it up:
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/819001/maxis-is-and-always-has-been-building-the-sims-4

Hi Simmers - you may have seen a lot of news today, and many threads here on the forum discussing what happened today for our Maxis Emeryville location. I want to assure you that The Sims 4 development has not been changed in any way. The Sims 4 has been in development at Redwood Shores all along and that will continue to be true. Many members of the team here have been developing The Sims franchise as far back as The Sims 1 and continue to invest in and love The Sims 4. Through the studio name changes and locations moves that have happened in our past, we've always remained Maxoids & Simmers.

Click to expand...

In reality EA killed just one Maxis studio, not all of them, but news were telling another story.

In the end it all comes down to ignorant journalists. Instead of a proper info, everyone is chasing specacular titles, correct or not, noone cares. It's too bad people don't blacklist sources of false news.

That's not the same. One of the Topware companies filed for bankruptcy last year. Such a thing didn't happen to EA.

One daughter company liquidated, another at least "restructured" ...

joxer said:

The language is pretty clear to me. Another example?

The news were "EA closed Maxis earlier this year"….

In reality EA killed just one Maxis studio, not all of them, but news were telling another story.

Click to expand...

This is actually a good example. EA killed the original Maxis studio. Which is basically the point all the news were about: Simcity didn't work out as EA wanted, so the studio (the original Maxis studio) was closed and all people were fired. There's nothing mysterious about this part. Original Maxis is dead, and SimCity is dead, except as mobile franchise name made by some small Helsinki subsidiary. Nobody cares what happens to "The Sims Studio" in this context.

joxer said:

In the end it all comes down to ignorant journalists. Instead of a proper info, everyone is chasing specacular titles, correct or not, noone cares. It's too bad people don't blacklist sources of false news.

Click to expand...

No, I don't think you read that properly. Note that the only denial here is that the whole studio is closed. The Topware message doesn't clarify in any way or form (i) what the names of the legal companies Reality Pump was split into is or (ii) what the name and location of the company that went into bankruptcy is, and for it to go into bankruptcy, it has to be a company by itself. So, it looks as if the company went bankrupt and they salvaged some parts they split off. They didn't even tell us what happened to the name "Reality Pump". They must have transferred it to a different entity in order to claim that it still exists.

And as to the language, just look at this sentence:
“We see this more as a restructuring as it happens from time to time,”
Or to translate "what you may perceive as a total bankruptcy, we like to consider under a different name". A clear denial looks different from what we got.

Jup. It's just damage control. They want to keep selling the games.

The Gamepressure article was pretty informative. I knew Reality Pump lost people to CDProjekt, but it's much clearer to me now that much of the heart of the Reality Pump studio went over to CDProjekt. So some of the (better parts of) the legacy of the Two Worlds games seem to have ended up as part of the Witcher III?

Still, sad to see them go, but the Raven's Cry disaster made something like this rather likely.

I could see a blend of Witcher 2 and Two Worlds 2 as a very good thing. Keep the melee combat of Witcher and implement some of the crafting and magic of Worlds, along with its semi-open worldness. Makes me more interested in Witcher Worlds 3, to be honest.

Noo, please don't keep the Melee combat of Witcher 2.
Bought the CE of Witcher 2 and only made it through the Prologue the first time due to combat feeling terrible for me.
After the Combat revamp I gave it another try, but it still was the main reason why I quit again (this time I made it into the woods after the town).

They already threw Witcher 1 Combat overboard with W2 and I hope they do the same for W3.