Ex-Realtime Worlds employee and wife lash out at company heads

Reatime Worlds has fallen on hard times. The company is in deep financial troubles and had to layoff a large number of employees while struggling to stay in business. A small number of staff were re-hired to work on MyWorld, but some of those who were not asked to come back are left in dire straights. One former Realtime Worlds employee took to his personal blog to voice his disgust with what happened to himself and the rest of his colleagues.

Luke Halliwell explained how he expected his departure from Realtime Worlds to be an unpleasant, yet fair experience. What Halliwell did not expect was for Realtime Worlds to withhold wages owed to him.

“It felt like we were being let go decently, and then BOOM – not getting paid anything, owed last month’s wages, our notice periods, redundancy pay and unused holidays,” Halliwell wrote. “A substantial amount of money, all told.

He expressed concern over Americans who were let go from the company as well. Apparently those former employees who can’t find work within the country have one month to return to the United States with no help from Realtime Worlds.

The biggest problem Halliwell seems to have is with Reatime World’s management’s ability to handle funds. He couldn’t understand how management allowed Realtime Worlds to continue functioning without a way to pay its employees. Halliwell thinks things could have been done differently before the company “burn[ed] through $100m.”

Among the commenters on Halliwell’s post is his wife Lucy. She had some very harsh words for Realtime Worlds creative director Dave Jones and chairman Ian Hetherington.

“Dave Jones and Ian Hetherington have pissed away millions, they are getting away with not paying over 200 employees for the work that they have done and have fiddled their way to being able to buy back Project:MyWorld for cheap,” Lucy wrote.

She asserts Jones and Hetherington have enough money to personally pay employees unpaid wages. The brunt of her anger comes through in her final comments when she expresses what she would do to one of Jones’ cars.

“So Dave Jones if I end up having to put a bullet in my own horse’s head because no welfare charity has space for him I am going to barter my last possessions to have a fork lift driver dump his 800kg bloody carcass on the top of your favourite car.”

Luke Halliwell has secured a new job outside of the videogame industry in the United States, but his family won’t start seeing money from that job for the next couple months. Until then they must do what they can to get by.

Via [Luke Halliwell's Blog] Read [Game Informer]