Development
On 11 December 2006, New Enterprise Associates announced an investment of US$30 million into Realtime Worlds.[8]
Their first release under the name Realtime Worlds was the critically acclaimed 2007 action-adventure third-person sandbox game Crackdown, an Xbox 360 exclusive title.[4] In 2010, they released a massively multiplayer online game for Microsoft Windows, titled APB (All Points Bulletin), which had been in development for five years, and was hoped to generate upwards of "hundreds of millions of pounds".[9]
In 2007, at Develop magazine's Industry Excellence Awards, the company was nominated in a record-breaking seven categories, and took home the awards for Innovation and New UK/European Studio. Company chairman Ian Hetherington was also crowned Development Legend.[10] At the 2007 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Video Game Awards ceremony, Crackdown was nominated in five categories and won two, for Action and Adventure and Use of Audio.[11] In 2008, Crackdown was honored as Best Debut by the GDC's Game Developers Choice awards.[12]
On 14 February 2008, it was announced that Realtime Worlds had secured $50M in funding from a consortium led by venture capitalists Maverick Capital and New Enterprise Associates and joined by the WPP Group, a London-based advertising firm. The funds are expected to be used for "continued expansion".[4]
On 27 April 2009, Gary Dale left his COO position at Take-Two Interactive to become CEO of the company. Dave Jones stepped down as CEO of the company and took on the title of creative director.[13]
On 1 May 2010, Realtime Worlds annual accounts revealed a further $21M investment was made in the company in January 2010.[14] This brings the total investment in Realtime Worlds since 2006 to $101M.
On 29 June 2010, after five years of development, with lengthy delays, APB was released to the general public. As of 15 July 2010, APB had a metacritic score of 58 out of 100. On 7 July 2010, Realtime Worlds announced that it was to restructure its work force to focus more on providing "total support" for APB.[15]
On 16 September 2010, Realtime Worlds announced that it would be shutting down APB's servers for good.[16]
