Team Bondi developed L.A Noire a game that has shipped 4 million copies worldwide and sold 900,000 copies in its first month. It was also considered pretty good by the vast majority of critics. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Team Bondi have today officially closed its doors.
A month ago Team Bondi was placed into administration and today the final request for liquidation was submitted – effectively meaning that Team Bondi are gone for good. No Team Bondi officials have so far agreed to give an official comment.
Team Bondi was founded in 2003 by Brenden McNamara, whose ambition for the Australian gaming industry was lauded by fellow Australian developers. However, only weeks after Bondi’s first and only game – L.A Noire – was released accusations against Team Bondi and McNamara started to crop up in droves.
Such accusations ranged from developers being worked to exhaustion during the games crunch period, developers being left out in the credits and McNamara himself being an over-bearing boss from hell. After several weeks of such accusations it was revealed that Rockstar had declined to publish Bondi’s next game and had no further interest in working with the Australian development house.
After the tumultuous time Bondi had in the press shortly after the release of L.A Noire it’s hardly a surprise that the company was in trouble, but to the extent of liquidisation? That comes as a surprise. Still, if all the accusations against the upper management of Bondi are correct then perhaps Bondi deserved to fall, or at least learn the lesson that their management style was unrealistic in the long-term.
Good luck and best wishes go to all the staff at Team Bondi.
Source: Develop
