APB sale clears outstanding wage claims at Realtime Worlds

The sale of the intellectual property rights to APB: All Points Bulletin has allowed the Realtime Worlds' administrator to clear all unpaid wage claims and outstanding holiday at the defunct developer.

GamesIndustry.biz reported last week that the game has been acquired by GamersFirst's parent company K2 Network, and will now work on a free-to-play model, due for release in the first half of 2011.

"We are obviously very happy to have concluded the sale but at the same time very much regret the loss of jobs as a result of the closure of Realtime Worlds," commented Paul Dounis of administrator Begbies Traynor.

"As a consequence of the IPR asset sale all outstanding wages and holiday pay claims will be met in full.

"GamersFirst is a pioneer in the free-to-play space, thus APB will be re-launched as a free-to-play model game rather than the previous retail model. People who previously bought the game can now look forward to playing it again once it's back online."

The game will be tweaked by GamersFirst's own subsidiary Reloaded Productions, with the help of Epic's Unreal Engine 3.

"APB was a game that had several exceptional features and some brilliant ideas, even though it was plagued by some initial balance and monetisation issues," says Bjorn Book-Larsson, CTO and COO of GamersFirst, and responsible for GamersFirst's studio and game development efforts.

"We want to take all the unique features of this title, such as its unparalleled character, weapon and car customisation systems, and convert the game to a true free-to-play game. We are deep into the planning and early execution stages for this next chapter of APB and we will share more details in the near future. In order to put gamers first we will also actively engage the community in many aspects of all the planned changes."

The relaunched title will be known as APB: Reloaded.