Ex-Community Manager Tells The Story Of APB's Demise

Ben Bateman, formerly of now-defunct APB studio Realtime Worlds, spilled the beans on the company's final days in a recent interview. The most shocking thing? Bateman still retains his positivity and sense of attachment to the dead MMO.

Speaking with Eurogamer, the QA-tester-turned-community-manager had nothing but positive things to say of his experience with the company. "The building itself was impressive. And they were really good to us. Even the QA positions were six month contracts." he said.

Bateman's recount of the final layoffs, when APB failed to find a buyer and the servers were to be shut down and the doors locked, is heartbreaking in its illustration of a team that truly loved their game. He told Eurogamer of developers who stayed at their desks after being let go, trying to keep the game playable regardless. "Let's say if the login server went down, nobody would be able to login," he said. "So if we could secure and support just one login server, then as long as the districts were on another server then everything would be fine. We were trying to support the service, but no-one really had the resources."

The whole piece is a good read, and provides a startlingly different perspective than the one given by fellow ex-Realtime Worlds employee Luke Halliwell months ago.

Personally, I'm still hoping that APB's outstanding character generation technology resurfaces somewhere. Whatever you think of the rest of the game (ask Phil about it sometime – the man has opinions), that part was awesome.