InstantAction Goes Under

[Andy Chalk]

InstantAction Goes Under

Browser-based online game company InstantAction [http://instantaction.com/] has gone out of business.

It was exciting news when InstantAction Tribes [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/77034-IAC-and-GarageGames-Announce-InstantAction-Browser-Based-Gaming-Network]. But that wasn't enough to keep the lights on and yesterday management revealed to employees and gamers alike that InstantAction and the Instant Jam Facebook game were going under.

"Today, InstantAction informed employees that it will be winding down operations," manager Eric Priesz wrote in a Mass Effect Galaxy [http://www.torquepowered.com/community/blogs/view/20495] and many others.

Former InstantAction Director of Operations Alex Reid told Rumblefish [http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2010/11/instantaction_formerly_garage.html]. Ultimately, he said, the company just could not come up with earn money from its products.

In a bit of an interesting twist, InstantAction CEO Louis Castle said back in April [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99977-InstantAction-CEO-Says-Retailers-Horribly-Abuse-the-Industry] that retailers like Wal-Mart and GameStop had "abused the industry horribly" with rentals and used game sales, and suggested that technologies like InstantAction would eventually help drive them all under. "We're not going to be the only technology out there, but every one of them will be another brick in the wall, another step in the right direction to saving our industry from partners that became parasites," he said.


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[Swaki]

thats sad, i guess, i have never used the service and if i had heard about i have forgotten.

but it sounds like the employees have either begun or already found new work, so at least its one of the "nicer" bankrupts that have happened in the industry.

 

[Timbydude]

It's sad news, but I never thought the whole "hardcore games in your browser" thing was a good idea to begin with. That service is only mildly useful for game demos; past that, it's relatively pointless. Hardcore gamers don't want to play their games in a web browser, and casual gamers don't want to play hardcore games at all. No one wins.

I do wonder where this leaves the whole business with Tribes, though. I was excited for a reboot of the series, so it's sad to see that it won't happen.

 

[Swaki]

Glad they went under. All these companies constantly bitching about the used game market, I don't get it. It's not the consumer's fault that things are set up the way they are, we just want to spend less than 1/8th of a week's paycheck on each game. And we have that right...you can buy anything used, and you don't see every car dealership bitching about scrapyards. Or clothing designers bitching about Goodwill.

actually the car companies blamed used carsales on them going bankrupt, and clothing designers constantly *****, not about goodwill, but about stores like H&M selling cheap cloth that draws "inspiration" from them, people will always ***** when they dont make money and blaming someone else just makes it that much more fun, and this might just be the gamestops in Denmark, but its actually cheaper buying new games online than used games from their stores.

 

[Jkudo]

Glad they went under. All these companies constantly bitching about the used game market, I don't get it. It's not the consumer's fault that things are set up the way they are, we just want to spend less than 1/8th of a week's paycheck on each game. And we have that right...you can buy anything used, and you don't see every car dealership bitching about scrapyards. Or clothing designers bitching about Goodwill.

Umm...what are you talking about?

Sad to see InstantAction go, they were pretty cool and i wish there was another site like theirs out there.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Ultimately, he said, the company just could not come up with earn money from its products.

A not insignificant part of that sentence between "up with" and "earn" appears to have vanished into the ether somewhere, might want to fix it.

 

[Aptus]

The real problem is that InstantAction owns the Torque engine. Those guys apparently had no idea what was happening when they got the call they were out of business. Could be bad news for a lot of indie developers relying on the engine unless they release it open source.

 

[Valiance]

It's sad news, but I never thought the whole "hardcore games in your browser" thing was a good idea to begin with. That service is only mildly useful for game demos; past that, it's relatively pointless. Hardcore gamers don't want to play their games in a web browser, and casual gamers don't want to play hardcore games at all. No one wins.

I do wonder where this leaves the whole business with Tribes, though. I was excited for a reboot of the series, so it's sad to see that it won't happen.

Agreed 100%. Even Quake Live is played full-screen and requires hundreds of MB of map downloads and such after the initial plugin is installed.

Anyway, if this means that there's no more PlayTribes, then I just appreciate even more that Tribes: Universe is still being made...

 

[Ericb]

It's not the consumer's fault that things are set up the way they are.

If the consumer did not feed the rental and used games system, it would not be around.

Personally I do not lean to any side on this discussion yet, but there's no market without consumers.