Team Bondi staff amongst creditors owed more than $1.4m
As company is liquidated, LA Noire developers losing tens of thousands of dollars
The creative staff behind hit game L.A. Noire make up the majority of creditors waiting for some form of repayment after the company went into liquidation last month, GamesIndustry.biz can reveal.
More than AUD $1.4 million is owed to over 40 creditors according to legal documents filed by administrators deVries Tayeh - a company that is charging $55,000 in fees for winding up the business.
Individuals working in programming, design, production and gameplay - as well as an intern - are owed between $1600 and $99,000. Studio boss Brendan McNamara is also owed more than $102,000, records show.
With the company being liquidated it's increasingly unlikely that staff will be repaid any significant percentage of the outstanding amount.
While most of the debt outstanding is to personal creditors only a handful of businesses are listed, including motion capture firm Depth Analysis, also co-founded by McNamara. Depth Analysis continues as a going concern, although co-director Vicky Lord, who also acted as office manager at Team Bondi, has had her position terminated.
Although Team Bondi's LA Noire is one of the biggest commercial and critical successes of the year, following release it became embroiled in controversy.
While the game took over seven years to create, staff turnover was incredibly high, with the company and McNamara accused of overworking staff in a perpetual state of crunch.
Emails released and documented on GamesIndustry.biz also highlighted the souring of Team Bondi's relationship with publisher Rockstar, which eventually took equal credit in the development of the ambitious game and is now thought to own the IP.
As the studio collapsed in on itself, a number of staff left to join production house Kennedy Miller Mitchell and subsidiary Dr. D Studios, currently working on animated movie Happy Feet 2. It's rumoured KMM has also already bought a number of Team Bondi assets.
I understand these things can get confusing but I thought LA Noire was Team Bondi's property before Rockstar took them under their wing... Maybe the IP was part of the deal?
I highly doubt those staff owed payments will be received what they should, as the company has since sold its assets and is in the process of liquidation, doesnt look promising which is saddening.
@ James - Rockstar stepped in and helped with the production and publishing but the releationship soon soured between them due to [as reported] Team Bondi being stubborn on certains aspects. The majority of the problems came before Rockstar as they were an independnet before flirting with Sony before deciding to go multi platform.
I just want to get to Japan so I can make some Japanese anime games, enough said about what I think about Australian Game Development.
With De Blob's Blue Tongue Studios gone I don't want to work in an industry that just wants to make me work on boring lisenced games that won't sell to people who know about their games.
The reason why we're getting a PC port of LA Noire is quite probably because Rockstar have yet to make much, if any, of a profit from the game due to it's prolonged development cycle.
This is the entertainment industry. It's accounting magic.
There is no such thing as a "profit" in the entertainment industry. One hit goes to pay all the losses out there. It's creative accounting. (In the film industry they call points of profit "monkey points" - because only suckers would take them.)
What you want is point-of-sale gross revenue, and your salary.
You need to unionize if you want to see a level of compensation commensurate with your input.
noun [ treated as sing. or pl. ]
an Australian group of game makers formed to make one game in 7 years, L.A. Noire, quickly closing shop after release, while leaving most of its' developers without money owed.
See Also:
• Clusterf#@!
• Brendan McNamara
• Megalomania
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Joe Schultz on 7th October 2011 8:09pm