Castaway Entertainment shipwrecked, suspends operations
Castaway Entertainment, a studio established nearly five years ago by former Blizzard North devs, has become the latest casualty in an alarming trend among US game developers. Gamespot has reported that the studio has suspended operations, echoing similar death knells rung earlier this year Perpetual Entertainment, Iron Lore, and Stormfront Studios.
According to the report, Castaway has cut back its staff from nearly 25 people to just six critical staff members, and that all development activity has been shelved. Since Castaway was founded in 2003 the studio has produced only a single title, the XBLA pox Yaris, with other projects such as the unreleased Diablo-style game Djinn never having made it out of the ether.
According to the report, Castaway has cut back its staff from nearly 25 people to just six critical staff members, and that all development activity has been shelved. Since Castaway was founded in 2003 the studio has produced only a single title, the XBLA pox Yaris, with other projects such as the unreleased Diablo-style game Djinn never having made it out of the ether.











Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
voodoo_craig @ Apr 7th 2008 11:36AM
You mean there won't be another Yaris game?
Gutted!
Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Apr 7th 2008 11:41AM
"Shuddap Spalding!"
Madagascar References FTW!
Arturo @ Apr 7th 2008 11:44AM
WILLLLLSONNNNNN!!!
Wilson @ Apr 7th 2008 1:10PM
yeah?
Andre @ Apr 7th 2008 11:46AM
They're the ones that made Yaris? Glad to hear they're on the way out.
brandon_r87 : Brawl : 4897-5857-5091 @ Apr 7th 2008 11:52AM
Yeah, it's surprising that people left Blizzard to do Yaris.
dark_inchworm @ Apr 7th 2008 12:21PM
That was developed by former Blizzard folk?
...wow.
Wait, no, not WoW. I take that back.
Shagittarius @ Apr 7th 2008 11:50AM
Yaris RROD'ed my 360. Could have been coincidence but I think it was a direct result of playing it.
NATO_Duke @ Apr 7th 2008 11:52AM
Maybe now they'll learn that you have to make a product to survive in business.
Kanadwen @ Apr 7th 2008 12:05PM
Only Yaris? Well that's why folks!
THE WICKER MAN (BWF) (GT: Dalek Prime) @ Apr 7th 2008 12:09PM
Yaris.
Mr.ESC @ Apr 7th 2008 12:10PM
What in the hell was Toyota thinking when they decided to have developed a game like Yaris? That little kids were going to beg their parents to buy them a Yaris?, that gamers from 14 to 18 could eventually actually afford a yaris? That anyone in the world would like the Yairs. First of all Yaris have an awful design also they don’t shoot lazers, second have it announce it on the xlive was just plain bad and having a game about it was just a terrible idea then again a free bad game is better than having Yaris ads every-f*cking-where.
Yaris was confusing as hell and the shooting was awful (an error people in the U.S will never forgive) so yeah it was a bad game but is better than having a commercial storm in the damn dashboard.
To be honest you people exaggerate a lot. It was bad game but it wasn’t bad enough to save the president and less to be even remembered.
hoagie @ Apr 7th 2008 12:29PM
"It was bad game but it wasn’t bad enough to save the president..."
iLOL @ Bad Dudes reference, +1.
-1 for me being a big enough geek to know. :D
NATO_Duke @ Apr 7th 2008 12:30PM
You are all over the place there - you say it was so bad, and then say everyone’s exaggerating how bad it is.
"To be honest you people exaggerate a lot. It was bad game but it wasn’t bad enough to save the president and less to be even remembered."
What does that even mean?
As far as the marketing side, it seems that there are a lot of people over 16 who own 360's and this is a way to get them to recognize the name of the car. It works for that much.
NATO_Duke @ Apr 7th 2008 12:32PM
Oh, I get the refernce now after reading that other post. I must give credit - I would never have remembered that one.
Mr.ESC @ Apr 7th 2008 3:52PM
That my friend means that is time to get a new keyboard because I'm always typing in a hurry and this keyboard doesn't helps.
Sorry for all the typos, all my posts are usually plagued with those. I'll pick a new keyboard tomorrow with a new xlive gold account.
Now what I meant is that the game is bad but is not Big Rigs” OMG WTF” Bad just bad like a bad design, pure mediocrity, nothing especial that justifies the hate it receives. Like when you watch a movie, there is a difference between a dull boring movie and an Uwe Boll movie.
Mr.ESC @ Apr 7th 2008 4:06PM
Hey dudes, thanks for the 1up’s.
Let’s go for a burger …
HA! HA! HA! HA!
quickshade @ Apr 7th 2008 2:02PM
I think Joystiq needs to step back and ask themselves: "Do we really miss any of these developers" I mean in all honestly of all these studios that have gone under they produced maybe 2 good games all together.
ecco6t9 @ Apr 7th 2008 10:02PM
Serves those hippies right.
They should of just stayed apart of the Vivendi Group and now they have no jobs.
xman @ Apr 17th 2008 11:27PM
Wow you guys are hella harsh on developers. Just because they made a bad decision by making Yaris (in collaboration with Backbone Studios i might add) doesn't mean they should get put out of business
have you even seen the game they were working on, Djinn, it looked pretty clean.