Dark Matter team (Interwave Studios) laid off after failed Kickstarter

Yeah that's pretty unfortunate.

Here's a video showing it for anyone wanting to see:

http://youtu.be/eTPS_GGhMqk?t=35s

Ohhhh, sad to read that...

I hope Jeroen and others affected are doing fine!

Yep, the boyfriend of my cousin got laid off there.

But the good news is that he got another job already.

I hope the others are doing fine too.

Good luck to all affected. Lay offs fucking suck!

A team of six and management still knows nothing about the game. Shout outs to management.

What a load of complete shit. This whole situation could have been avoided if they'd just clearly marked the game as being an episode, first instalment, or something. Anything is better than misleading people into thinking a game is a full story experience, only for them to be blindsided by it ending out of nowhere without so much as a cinematic or piece of art.

IMO no blame at all can be aimed at the actual developmers, only the leaders and/or marketing fools who thought they'd get away with this rather than just being open and transparent with people. They've ruined what chance the game had of still being a small success.

FrieChamp i haven't worked on this game. Left Interwave 2.5 years ago. I believe only Xanthi is affected from mapcore members.

Quote from FrieChamp

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/2029…ve_responds.php

Management didn't know about the ending? I don't believe that for one second.

Maybe Iceberg released an older build for whatever reason? It's strange that there wasn't even a concept painting or something for an end screen. Who thought this would be a good idea to end a game?

Quote from dux

Yeah that's pretty unfortunate.

Here's a video showing it for anyone wanting to see:

http://youtu.be/eTPS_GGhMqk?t=35s

Hahaha oh man, the genuine disappointment in his voice... you see, this is why it was such a horrible thing to do. Can you imagine something like that happening in Half-Life 2 when you walk through a door in Black Mesa East or some shit?

What is that flash of art that appears just before the text comes up, btw? Is it the loading screen imagery or some lazily hidden stuff that was meant to come next?

Can't say I ever had good dealings with Interwave's management, what with one of them personally threatening my career and stuff. And here we have another great example of their management screwing up catastrophically. Good riddance imo.

Sounds like pretty bad form marks. The fact that they've tried to lay all the blame at the feet of their (now laid-off staff) makes me think that they're probably assholes. You shouldn't do that in any circumstances, period. You're the captain of the ship and it's your responsibility what goes out the fucking door. The place going under is probably for the best, just a shame about the project that their staff presumably put a lot of love into.

The problem with these type of guys is that they're gonna be hired into the management team of a different studio and probably get a salary increase as well.

Very sad to hear it turned out this way, looked interesting.

sounds like I need to get into management. you're all fired, and I get a raise. sweet

Yeh Marks that dude....

Hehe FMPONE

I was part of IW's management for 5 years and pretty much co-founded the company but end of August it all ended for me, The staff was already laid off end of July and I still feel shit about that.

Especially because they became friends of mine, I'm happy though that most already found a new job. The whole Dark Matter situation is one big cluster fuck of biblical proportions.. Wrong descisions were made and it's now all coming together on the internet. We had never so much coverage than in the last couple of days. So at least the marketing is working for once

I took some time off and thinking about my next move, not sure yet if this will be in game development.