LA Noire may have been the best selling game in May when it launched from publisher Rockstar Games and it may have also gotten lots of critical acclaim for its developer Team Bondi. However the road to making the historical open world action game was reportedly so filled with delays and issues that Rockstar Games may not publish a game with Team Bondi again. In a new article on Gamesindustry.biz (free registration required) internal Team Bondi emails as well as info from unnamed sources paint a picture of issues between Rockstar Games and Australia-based Team Bondi, particularly with the developer's founder Brendan McNamara.
The article's author previously wrote a story for IGN where 11 former Team Bondi team members, all of which didn't want to be identified, talked about the various issues in completing LA Noire. The game reportedly started being developed in 2004. Earlier in June, a web site was posted which claimed that a large portion of team members who had worked at Team Bondi but who left before the game was completed were not mentioned in the game's credits.
Today's Gamesindustry.biz story expands on the IGN story with even more info from unnamed sources and emails. One source claims, "I've heard a lot about Rockstar's disdain for Team Bondi, and it has been made quite clear that they will not publish Team Bondi's next game." The source added, "Rockstar also made a huge contribution to the development; their producers were increasingly influential over the last two years of the game's development, and overruled many of the insane decisions made by Team Bondi management." The source added that Rockstar had thought about acquiring Team Bondi but later decided that would be "a terrible idea." Rockstar Games has not responded to either story. In the IGN story McNamara is quoted as saying, "I'm not in any way upset or disappointed by what I've done, and what I've achieved I'm not even remotely defensive about it."
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