Another Great Game Company Closes it's Doors...

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Sierra Gets Shutdown
By Mike Meikle -- News Writer
Published 9:21 PM CDT, June 21, 2004

The lights go out at old-school game company, Sierra, as Vivendi restructures is business.

More depressing news for the industry, Vivendi Universal Games has cut 350 staff and shut down Seattle-based Sierra. The venerable games company created some of the most popular action and adventure games in the 80's. The Sierra brand will live on in name only and projects tied to the Sierra pipeline, Half-Life 2, Ground Control II and Tribes: Vengeance are already being developed by other teams within Vivendi. Also affected by the restructuring, the Hoyle brand of card and board games have been canceled.

"Restructuring the organization and reducing our cost base are necessary to improve our operating effectiveness and profitability," said VU Games CEO Bruce Hack, in as terse a manner as possible. "This constitutes another important step in our turnaround plan aimed to better position the company for growth."

Along with VU Games restructuring, the game company is prepping up for profitability with a powerful lineup for the second half of 2004. VU Games is looking for some higher revenues with titles like World of Warcraft, Spyro: A Hero's Tail and the well-received The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.
» Mike Meikle

 

Sierra died years ago when they shut down the original adventure game studio.

 

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well said antime...ahhh...still remember when i first played quest for glory VGA and Space Quest VGA...great times...

 

Surely vivendi could still pay to keep everything open yet have smaller profits .... cheeky money grabbing buggers ...

 

Shocking news

 

Not good... but to be honest I think they were past their prime anyways :smt009

 

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I agree...

Anyone remember King's Quest?

 

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Welcome to the world of American business, LeGIt...

 

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Vivendi is French.

 

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Whatever they all have the same business ethics these days

 

I agree too.

 

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Well it all makes sense now. :smt043

 

:smt009 To bad they made the best games of their time.

 

damn sierra was a great company....

 

This sucks. Sierra was awsome. I'ts all about Quest for glory. I acutally had the original when it was called "Hero's quest: So you want to be a hero" which stinks for me becasue that game is actually worth a little bit of money now.

Too bad, first Westwood gets bought out now Sierra is gone.

 

loved that game It came free with some IBM I got a long time ago.

 

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My brother had the Quest for Glory Collection, until his copy was stolen (along with a few hundred of his CDs, his Xbox, and engagement rings :smt022 ). He called me up a few days ago asking if he should get another copy. I felt awful telling him how much I've seen those go for ($75+).

I rather like Space Quest, too. The only "Quest" series I never got into was Police Quest...

 

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I played the first King's Quest on the Amiga.....it was cool :smt040

 

This is indeed sad news - this pretty much means that all the adventure game companies of yore are either closed, or have become so enamoured with making poor quality Star Wars games that they have decided to can each and every proposed adventure game because it 'won't sell' or some pansy-assed idea like that *coughLucasartscough*. These are truely sad times we live in... :smt022