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GDAA responds to recent Auran events

Company

We've had plenty of Auran related news of late, lots of opinions and responses, and considering the situation at Auran in the last week and day, it's quite understandable. I think now would be a great time to post some official responses which will helps us understand what the plan is now for Auran.

For all ex-staff from Auran, the rest of the games industry has shown extraordinary interest in your talent, so be sure to check up on Sumea for current and future job postings. Companies such as Interzone Games, Big Ant Studios, Sega Creative Assembly, Firemint, Tantalus, Krome Studios, BigWorld Tech, Halfbrick Studios, and THQ Studios Australia are just some that have recently expressed new job openings. You can find more in our jobs section.

Game Developers Association of Australia CEO, Greg Bondar:

The GDAA has been advised that the Auran development studio has seen staff retrenched. The Games company, Auran Games continues to be a member of the GDAA and is still trading with FURY, Trainz, and other titles all being fully supported. The GDAA is a company-based membership organisation and we are of course saddened by the news of job losses. Auran continues to be strong supporter of the GDAA and its activities. We particularly wish the Auran staff all the best, and assure them that the GDAA will assist in any way it can so as to ensure that staff are redeployed in the industry. We hope that all staff will be able to find positions in other Australian development studios.

Tony Hilliam, Auran CEO:

Auran: the facts

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, staff will be paid for all their work to date, their annual leave entitlements, redundancy payments and long service leave.

Whilst this is the end of Auran Developments, it is far from the end of FURY and Trainz.

Trainz is the world's leading rail simulator and has a community of more than 250,000 registered users around the world. It is published in dozens of countries and there are many products in the market today. The bulk of the Trainz team will continue to work on current projects and these projects will be released next year.

With Fury, we built up a team to make a world beating game and sadly we have not reached our goals yet. Our performance to date has meant we could no longer fund the 70 strong dev team. However, FURY: Age of the Chosen will be launched as planned Friday 8pm GMT. We have put together a small but committed team to continue developing FURY on an ongoing basis. This core team, as we announced last week, are a passionate group of people committed to making FURY a success. 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.

I believe that once people hear about F:AotC and the new Free to Play business model, we'll start building up the player numbers and revenues that will make the game successful.

I expect the naysayers will have different thoughts, but they haven't played the new build yet.

Lance Jago, Community Relations Manager for Trainz:

Hi everyone,

This afternoon Auran Developments, the developer of Fury was placed into voluntary administration (Chapter 11). This involved all the employees being dismissed.

However, the future of Trainz is still looking good. Trainz is owned by Auran Games and the directors are committed to continuing the projects currently under development and ensuring that Trainz remains as the number one rail simulator in the world. This involves a number of the Trainz team being re-employed by Auran Holdings, the parent company.

The current Trainz team are working with management to ensure that customers are not impacted by this transition. We wish to advise the community that Trainz, the Download Station and this community will continue as normal. We would also like to confirm that Trainz Classics 3 and other exciting projects to be announced soon will be delivered in the New Year as planned.

Cheers,

Lance Jago
Community Relations Manager, Trainz