Another US studio suffers - Castaway suspends operations
Michael French Today, 10:23am
Studio founded by ex-Blizzard staff facing trouble after project cancellations
A report on GameSpot confirms that Castaway, which developed the XLBA advergame Yaris, has ceased operations.
The studio was founded in 2003 by a group of ex-Blizzard Entertainment staff, but in that time had only released the 360 downloadable title due to a number of project cancellations.
Most recently, the studio had been in negotiations on two projects which fell through - one because the interested publisher chose to give the game to an in-house team, the other was caught in the crossfire of a corporate merger (possibly the Activision Blizzard deal).
Now the studio has trimmed its staff roster from 25 to the six senior staff, but will be closed properly unless there is some kind of 11th hour reprieve.
A number of studios in North America have suffered in the past few weeks following project cancellations and poorly performing games. Stormfront recently reported it was to close, as has Pseudo Interactive and Iron Lore.
