Another US studio suffers – Castaway suspends operations

A report on GameSpot confirms that Castaway, which co-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.

"If somebody came in tomorrow and said, ‘Here’s a whole bunch of money. Can you get back up and running,’ then Monday we could be back up and running," said president Michael Scandizzo. "But a couple of weeks from now, as we slowly wind down, there will be a point by which we will not be able to get back up and running.

"It would have to be soon, but if anyone wanted to come in and save us, we’d give the whole kitchen sink to them on the extremely cheap," he added. "Otherwise after almost 10 years of this group working together, we’re going to have to dissolve."

A number studio 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.