Red 5 Studios have been busy working away on their MMO Firefall, in fact they have been working on it for quite some time and it really should have been released now.
We were expecting to hear more news on the PvP which was shelved to be reworked back in September. What we were not expecting was to find that CEO Mark Kern has been asked to leave his position as CEO at the studio. An internal email leaked to Gamefront reads:
“Today, the Red 5 Studios Board of Directors met and after deliberation have decided that Mark Kern will no longer be the Chief Executive Officer or on the Board of Red 5 Studios. Effective immediately Mark will no longer have any authority to act for or on behalf of Red 5 Studios.
“We will be holding a team meeting to discuss this topic at 11:15 a.m. tomorrow but I wanted to make sure you were officially informed of this significant change to your company.”
Kern was the last of the original founders who formed the company after leaving Blizzard where he was team lead on World of Warcraft.
Chinese publisher The9 now own a majority share in Red 5 Studios so perhaps the continual delays of Firefall have upset members of the board and changes at the top had to be made to get things moving. Who knows.
After layoffs at Red 5 back in September due to the studio being “reorganised”, it sounds like things may not be going brilliantly. No Doubt we’ll hear more on this in an official statement soon.
