If you didn't hear, the makers of the Torque Gaming Engine (TGE) and browser-based gaming platform InstantAction closed today. Over 100 people lost their jobs, and most were totally unaware that it'd happen.

I worked for them for >2 years, and was in their first wave of personel cuts a little over two months ago. You know a lot of people are having a bad day when 80% of your Facebook friend feed is your former co-workers talking about their bus ride, or drive home from their last day at work.

They will be selling the rights to the Torque gaming engine. I hope someone smart buys it, because it was a pretty decent engine from my understanding....Affordable too. They recently sold the rights of the Tribes and Starsiege series to Hi-Rez gaming, creators of Global Agenda.

They had three offices - a very small one in Eugene (their hometown), Portland, and Las Vegas. The studio was ran by former Westwood co-founder and creator of the Command & Conquer series Lou Castle. The studio was initially established in 2000 by Jeff Tunnell and former developers at the legendary studio, Dynamix (Earthsiege, A-10 series, Betrayal at Krondor and just about every good Sierra game). As GarageGames, they made the popular 'Marble Blast' title, which sold over 500,000 copies on Xbox Live Arcade.

All in all, a sad, but not unexpected day for the studio.

Im sorry to hear that.

That sucks.  Sorry about your job.  I'm a game design art major in my senior year.  Stories like these make me go "oh fuck"

Damn. Sorry to hear that. Marble Blast is hella fun.

Just as a note:

My motivation of posting this wasn't to garner sympathy for my situation at the company. I've been gone for ~2 months, and I've made the best of the situation. I do feel bad for a lot of the others that got let go, because the way the situation was handled wasn't the best. The company moved its main offices from Eugene to Las Vegas about a year ago, which was a difficult decision for a lot of people....Only to have the studio close down a year later.

I'm really sorry to hear that. This economy...

That really is a shame. TGE is a very affordable engine and best of luck to the 100 plus people who lost their jobs.

For more on TGE: http://www.torquepowered.com/products/torque-3d

I really liked Blockland (Lego-clone block building and deathmatches), made with TGE and its creator employed at GG.

I hope that will be OK.