Yet more news for the local development community here in Australia: EA’s Visceral Melbourne has announced it will close.
MCV Pacific broke the news, quoting an EA spokesperson as saying “With no active project in development at that location, we’ve decided to close the Visceral Melbourne office. They are talented individuals and may find other roles elsewhere in EA, if they choose.”
Remaining studios held by publishers in Australia are few and far between. There’s 2K Marin (Canberra studio), Sega Studios Australia (Brisbane) and fellow EA developers Firemint and Iron Monkey.
Other high-profile closures recently included two THQ studios, Pandemic, Krome and Auran.
There’s obviously a couple of small indie studios around, but the Australian Government really, really needs to start to protect the industry before it’s completely gone. Rising costs associated with the strong Australian dollar, as well as a lack of federal funding is making it very difficult to justify keeping the studios open through global financial difficulties.
