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They Break the News, I Break it Again!

What can I say? It's a brutal industry. The fight for shelf space has become so heated lately companies would rather back titles like Roboskeet, Froginator 2 and Who Wants to Play With Regis 2nd Edition than challengingly deep fare like Norm Koger's Inscrutable Tile-Based Wargame 101, MS NFL Favor 2001 or Flight Limited II. This past week we also saw Hell freeze over, one of the best developers collapse and confirmation that there will be only one Football game next year (no not Soccer, real Football).

We learned last week that arguably the finest computer game developer, Looking Glass Studios, is shutting its doors for good. Well, not "for good" because this is really bad news, people. Not only are some of the best programmers in the business out of a job, the fate of the wonderful Thief, System Shock and Flight Unlimited franchises are in question.

The latest rumors indicate that Looking Glass ran out of funds developing its proprietary Dark engine (used in Thief, Thief II and System Shock 2) and they were unable to secure an investor to keep going. Another rumor suggests that Eidos did attempt to buy a stake in LG, which would have saved the company, but apparently they were overextended due to their money bleeding Ion Storm charity case.

There is absolutely nothing humorous about this news. Looking Glass consistently made the deepest FPS games available and their departure will impact the future of the industry. Good luck to all involved and we look forward to seeing where you land.