Rockstar Won’t Publish The Next Team Bondi Project

Rockstar won’t be publishing the next Team Bondi game, so the Australian L.A. Noire developers will need to find a new publisher.

That’s according to emails picked up by Gamesindustry.biz (and reported by Eurogamer) overnight, that suggest that the working conditions were so terrible at Team Bondi that Rockstar now has “disdain” for the studio.

[drop]The email whistleblowing follows allegations a week or two back that suggested the conditions at Team Bondi were unworkable, and in particular director Brendan McNamara’s “controversial management style.”  Reports abound that workers had to run 110 hour weeks, “often without overtime pay.”

“I’ve heard a lot about Rockstar’s disdain for Team Bondi,” says the source, “and it has been made quite clear that they will not publish Team Bondi’s next game.”

“Team Bondi are trying to find another publisher for their next title, but the relationship with Rockstar has been badly damaged – Brendan treats L.A. Noire like a success due to his vision but I think Rockstar are the ones who saved the project. They continued to sink money into L.A. Noire, and their marketing was fantastic.”

“Without their continued support, Team Bondi would have gone under several years ago,” said the source.  Strong words, but it’s evident that a lot of L.A. Noire’s retail success was down to the Rockstar branding – the game itself was hardly the best thing this year.

“It’s also worth pointing out that Rockstar used to be very keen on making Team Bondi something like ‘Rockstar Sydney’ – the more they worked with Team Bondi management, the more they came to understand that this was a terrible idea.”