It is often said that when one door closes, another opens. That seems be the case for Vancouver’s gaming industry following news that Radical Entertainment laid off 89 employees and closed their doors.
They have instead been replaced in BC’s gaming landscape by GREE, a Japanese giant who are looking to expand their operations. The Vancouver studio will focus on free-to-play mobile games that serve the company’s extensive fan base of 230 million users and growing.
The Vancouver location represents the company’s seventh studio worldwide, with its main operations based out of Japan and Tech Mecca, San Francisco. The Vancouver studio will be spearheaded by respected industry veteran Steve Lin, who has served as the company’s VP of Consumer Operations and had a big part in the establishment of GREE’s San Francisco studio.
The company is looking to hire up to 10 people for the Vancouver office with plans to double that number once they begin to produce games, which they expect to be doing in 6-8 months.
GREE’s selection of Vancouver is also a huge coup for the province. They recently lost Rockstar Studios to Toronto, as the famed company consolidated their operations due in large part to financial incentives offered by the province of Ontairo.
“The goal for the Canadian studio is to merge the knowledge we gained from our recent successes with more experimental approaches. We want to take some risks and come up with new games and ideas that will contribute to the ongoing evolution of the mobile game space,” said Mr. Lin. “The creative community in Vancouver has made tremendous contributions to the mobile and video game industry and we are looking forward to tapping into that talent pool and building a team of passionate innovators.”
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