Auran Enters Administration, Dismisses All Staff

Author: by David Jenkins, Staff

Australian developer Auran has announced it has entered into voluntary administration and let all staff members go, just a day after announcing that massively multiplayer online game Fury would change to a free-to-play rather than subscription based business model. A statement from company CEO Tony Hilliam said that "The Directors of Auran Developments, the company that employs all the Auran staff, have today called in a Voluntary Administrator (like Chapter 11 in the US). All the staff were dismissed today." "Despite earlier reports," he continued, "staff will be paid for all their work to date, their annual leave entitlements, redundancy payments and long service leave." The news follows last week's reports that the company was forced to downsize its 60 man team following the slow start for Fury and new outsourcing to Asia. At the time, Hilliam said that after a ramp up from 30 to 70 staff members to complete Fury and its Battlestar Galactica XBLA game it had made some cutbacks to "focus on a smaller, more agile core team of Fury developers." This was reiterated in the most recent report as well, saying that with the launch of its latest content for the now free-to-play game, "we have put together a small but committed team to continue developing FURY on an ongoing basis... We will be releasing bug fixes, content and feature updates on a regular basis and in fact they will be more frequent with our new agile team." According to a report on GameSpot AU, an unnamed Auran insider claims that administrators will meet with company creditors in January to decide whether the company can be restructured or should be moved into full liquidation. Concluded CEO Hilliam, "I believe that once people hear about [the new Fury content] and the new Free to Play business model, we’ll start building up the player numbers and revenues that will make the game successful."