Big Huge Games has had an exceedingly rough time of it. Since developing Kingdoms of Amalur and being driven into bankruptcy, some of the development team found jobs in companies all over the US, but the largest single hirer was Epic Games. The developer of the Unreal Engine and huge games publisher hired up a chunk of the dispossessed staff to form a new studio, Impossible Studios. Epic have now broken the news that this studio, too, has been closed. Again putting the staff into jeopardy.
More after the break.
Tim Sweeney broke the news through Epic’s community site, saying “When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team.”
Epic have had the good grace to provide Impossible Studio’s staff with “3 months of severance pay” and also allowed the team to “form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo.”
Sweeney didn’t elaborate on the reason for closing the studio beyond saying “It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn’t working out for Epic.”
However, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Eurogamer are reporting that Ken Levine seems interested in picking up a number of the Impossible team. He posted a status update to Facebook saying “”I’m a huge fan of everything Big Huge ever did.” and a link toIrrational’s job page.