14 DAY TRIAL // Crytek, the developer behind such titles as the original Far Cry and the newly launched Crysis series, seems to have acquired the Free Radical Design studio, which had declared bankruptcy and laid off a lot of its staff a few weeks ago. The United Kingdom-based studio now only has 40 employees and is not continuing any development work on its projects.
Rob Yescombe, who is the writer behind Haze, the latest game released by Free Radical, initially announced the news to 1UP and now Gamasutra is saying that the sources that it has inside the game industry have confirmed the move. For the moment, the two outlets are not saying how much the transaction was worth and what plans Crytek has with its new property.
Free Radical was initially founded way back in 1999 by people who had left Rare. It managed to create at least one significant series, TimeSplitters, but it failed to launch other successful games. Haze, which was much hyped but flopped at retail while being hated by critics, meant that the studio was not able to continue financing its operation. Some of the people behind Free Radical are now forming a new studio, called Pumpkin Beach.
Before going under, Free Radical was working on TimeSplitters 4 and fans are surely hoping that Crytek will allow the studio to finish the title while offering support in the publishing process. Probably more information will be released in the coming days.
At the moment, Crytek has four other studios, in Frankfurt, Hungary, Bulgaria and Ukraine. The company is working on a true sequel to Crysis after having released Crysis Warhead, which told a parallel story to that of the original game in the series, in the autumn of last year. We don't know much about the planned sequel other than it will probably be available initially only on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, with a PC port coming later.