Redundancies as Ignition Closes London Studio

There were never any police at the Gainesville office. There were three or four private security guards, who I think were armed with nothing more than gun-shaped tasers. It likely wouldn't have mattered had they had guns anyway, as at least two of them were so obese that they would have had difficulty reaching the holsters at their waists. It wasn't threatening, it was just rude, as if laying people off without so little warning wasn't rude enough already.

That isn't to say there weren't warnings. The project had been going downhill for a while. I've read it elsewhere, but it's very true how work was constantly being thrown out and redone most often for story reasons. That wasn't good for morale. I was hired after Steed left (corporate was actually approving new hires right up until about a month ago), and I don't think we made any real progress the entire time I was there. As of last week, the story itself was one of the most cliched and uninspired bits I've ever seen, but the powers that be were so devoted to it that they were constantly sacrificing anyone's attempts to make the game fun because it needed to fit their god-awful story. The "script" for the game was a work of bad short fiction instead of an actual plan for level progression, and nowhere in it did the writer seem to think about how anything the player did ought to actually be fun. The leaked videos of the first iteration look more fun to me than what was being worked on last week, because having that much fun didn't fit into the story anymore.

To UTV's credit, the refocusing (from being story-centric to gameplay-centric) might be a good thing, they just should have done it a hell of a lot sooner. There's still some promise buried at the bottom of this s**t pile, they might dig it up, and I wish the best of luck to the people they didn't fire who will be doing the digging.

I was there. Lets get a few things straight:

The game doesnt look anything like the videos or concept being posted. All that stuff is seriously old. The videos are ridiculous most of it could never have run on any console.

The game doesnt suck. Considering where we came from killer progress was being made. The guys in the building last week were trying to work hard at making a cool game.

The EP was doing good stuff and brought in good people to try and save this thing. We did have to re-boot, but it was for the best. We were actually making a game finally. It's not their fault the dick-heads before them Jeremy/Steed/Kidd pissed away cash.

Basically UTV kept telling us to make the game but then they did everything they could to get in the way. A couple of months back they saw a demo and told our EP that we were awesome. Last week they fired half the staff. wtf

UTV are also jag-offs because they weren't paying anyone not on staff. Contractors and vendors and even the company that did most of the multi-player dev still haven’t been paid. And these are the guys flying in from England and India( first class I bet) just to f with the team every few weeks.

They didnt end up cutting everyone. They brought back just enough people for a death-march to a stand alone multi-player release. Stoopid

The severance packages do suck. Guys I know who moved here recently aren’t getting any help getting home.

There were only two private security guards, and they were laughable. But them just being there was what was so uncool.

Jeff Lujan seems to be almost as big of a douche as steed.

Hey ex employee person above me. Basically all iterations of the game suffered because of one main reason:The corporate heads at Ignition didn't know how to control nor run a US based game studio. They made some seriously bad choices in managers and directors down the line. However I will say this the initial tech and game play originated from Jeremy and his tech guys was groundbreaking, so if anything the respect for that should be given as well as those early art concepts like them or not the passion was there. Many people got fired or quit right when Steed was hired and moral fell at an all time low.
This is a lesson well learned by all.

This Just Keeps Getting Better

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I used to work and Exigent and believe you me, it a use-and-throw studio. Steed replaces artists like a kid wanting new toys and throwing away old ones. The whole staff gets recycled once in about every two years. He is like a machine gun always firing people.
He is a real expert at bluffing, and you'd actually believe him. He told people at Exigent that he knew James Cameron and they'd be working soon on a sequel to Avatar. Thats laughable, considering we've never worked on movies, and only on games.

Sorry to hear about the people at Ignition, people hate Steed no less in Exigent either.

Wow I am happy to see the STEED going down...ohh it feels nice. I hope all of the employees I worked with will go out and have great success!
one word we can take away from this....

KARMA!!!

Actually it was a mix of Concept, Cinematics, Animation and 3D Art that saved the studio during 2008... not just concepts.

I have it on good authority that those videos are all actual in-game footage.

Hey Godfrey,

There were two major presentations If I remember while we were there, one was in May of 2008, There was no new 3d art based on the art-style at that time and the cinematic had some issues, and right from the source, Vijay Chadha and UTv approved extra funds based on the progression of the art style and the concept art but as always the tech and physics was always strong. This was the 2nd art reboot. Now there was another major presentation to the Ignition heads and UtVs ceo Ronnie in September of 2008 I think which did have concept art, game play, 3d art and the the Reich soldiers vs the Psi freak cut scene thats been posted etc so you might have been refering to that. Anyway it all doesn't matter now, but from the reactions of the masses who have seen the Vids posted of all iterations of the game it seems people would have wanted to buy it, regardless of what it looked like. It's extremely hard to do a triple AAA game with good story, great game play and graphics, it takes the right combo of talent and good leadership to do it and money. I think everyone on the team really believed this would be something special. As I recall out of the 3 original IPs Ignition was devleoping El Shaddai, WarDevil and Reich, Reich was always considered by Ignition Corporate as the sure bet as the tech and physics was so well established and functional on the xbox, Cudos to Jeremy and the programmers for pushing the UnREAL engine.

Exigent is right across the street from my house. when exigent started few of my friends were hired as artist there. i had beaten my self up about missing the opportunity as i only came to know about it once the hiring had stopped.

Now the state they are in is bad. There is nothing good to hear about this studio. people crib about their sompanies all the time but this one is different. my firends have seen many ppl fired just cause they were about to leave for home after office hours.

the situation is bad. i am not surprised that the game was scrapped. anything to do with exigent seems to go down the drain

Exigent is right across the street from my house. when exigent started few of my friends were hired as artist there. i had beaten my self up about missing the opportunity as i only came to know about it once the hiring had stopped.

Now the state they are in is bad. There is nothing good to hear about this studio. people crib about their companies all the time but this one is different. my firends have seen many ppl fired just cause they were about to leave for home after office hours.

the situation is bad. i am not surprised that the game was scrapped. anything to do with exigent seems to go down the drain

There is news that UTV Ignition Entertainment is also closing down the California office which will result in staff having to relocate to Texas which will be the main US base. The company is going under and I will not be surprised if within the next six months UTV pull the plug on Ignition Entertainment as UTV are seeing their money wasted by incompetent management.

Staff also have to take wage cuts or lose their jobs

I was there when UTV tried to bring back Steed again in May and everyone was leaving or talking about leaving. It was around that time Vijay the CEO of Ignition seemed to disappear from the picture. Both him and his brother who headed up US publishing didnt show up at E3. Then I heard Ajay got fired. Vijay went off sick at exactly the same time and has not been seen since. But its pretty obvious something happened there. Especially as just around then Ignition hired new managers in London. A coincidence?! But there has never been any formal announcement or anything about a change of CEO or him leaving or anything.

They came over around same time and fired Kidd, just before E3. And we had been hearing through our grapevine Paul Steed was coming back and was in town. He was telling people on the team he was coming back and people started leaving or talking about leaving in droves. But instead of Steed coming back they promoted up Scot Kramarich to head the team instead. I heard that the new managers from Ignition actually threatened to quit themselves if UTV brought Steed back. So they were alright in my book for doing that. I always got the impression the guys in London were battling with their UTV bosses actually to get the funds to Florida to pay people. It was always some dude called Prickesh in India that the buck seemed to stop at when I was trying to get my contractor fees through.

One of the guys from London told me the Ignition marketing team had categorically rejected Steeds game concept as unsellable. So it seems some people in Ignition did know what they were doing. But sadly not the ones calling the shots. You really got to ask what kind of idiots would rehire a guy after he abuses staff and swindles money out of the company into his own pocket ?

I also heard that this new guy Lujan let the publishing team in California know they are losing their jobs by email. That was the guy that came in and closed us with armed security. However naive the decisions that the original CEO Vijay was, we didnt get treated like that under him.

So I want to say Kudos everyone like me that stuck this out til now. Kudos to everyone that either left,were fired, abused, sexually harassed or bullied by Steed during their time on Reich. Kudos to those that threatened to leave in May to prevent his return then at risk of being sacked. That took guts.

It seems thing went down hill when Steed was hired is that the general concensus from most of the ignition FL employees? I left not long after Steed was hired. I remember when JP and Jeremy were running the show not many people were fired and at least there seem to be progress. Don't get me wrong it was by far a perfect but it seem to have been moving along. I feel if we would have stuck with the original direction and see it through and have completed the game much of this could have been avoided. The problem is, firing and then re-hiring and then going in a new direction is not only time consuming but a waste of money.
I mean game play wise their were some great concepts that were created like the Statue-mech the Psi-freak, the Reich dog. I heard Steed trashed all the hard work that had been done and started over. Looking at the pre-steed artwork , it seems it had more continuity. What Steed provided seemed generic something you could see in a poor-mans version of Bio-Shock or fall out with no true vision.
Hopefully game developers will stay away from the likes of Steed, a truly unqualified corrupted individual.