Evaluating only Realtime Worlds’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Unit economics as the #1 likely cause. That’s exactly how it died.
Realtime Worlds was founded by Dave Jones, creator of the original Grand Theft Auto, and grew to 300 employees in Dundee. Their first game, Crackdown (2007), was a hit bundled with the Halo 3 beta. Their second: APB (All Points Bulletin), a massively multiplayer online game pitting criminals against enforcers. Development cost approximately $100M and took 5 years. APB launched June 29, 2010 to poor reviews (58/100 Metacritic) and immediately steep subscriber decline. On August 16, 2010 — 79 days post-launch — Realtime Worlds went into administration. 220 employees were made redundant.
Lesson
“Large-budget online games must validate the monetization model before committing 5 years of development. The shift from subscription to free-to-play happened between APB's development start (2005) and its launch (2010). Realtime Worlds had 5 years to observe the market shift and re-evaluate — and didn't.”