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Rage Software Limited or Rage Games Limited was a British video game developer. Formed in 1992, its games were marked by an emphasis on graphical effects with arcade gameplay.

The company was forced to close in January, 2003. Some of the former development staff has subsequently formed another company, Swordfish Studios.

Rage grew at a rapid pace through the nineties, setting up development studios in Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, Warrington, Sheffield, Dundee, London and Leeds at various times. It planned to use the capital investement it had gained from flotation to grow to a sufficient size to become a publisher, so that it could retain a larger slice of the profits than it could see as a developer.

Unfortunately it ultimately overreached itself, and a couple of bad studio acquisitions and consquent writeoffs, coupled with unpaid debts from a major overseas publisher, resulted in a share price crash with the bank calling in its loans just as the titles with greatest commercial potential ("Rocky", "Lambourghini") were hitting, or about to hit, the market. Trading was suspended in the shares and investors in the company at the time lost a considerable amount

Closure controversy

Several Rage shareholders regard Rage's asset management irresponsible due to seemingly favorable treatment given to family members.

Swordfish Studios is partially owned by former Rage managing director Paul Finnegan's wife Joan. In October 2002, Swordfish bought Rage's Birmingham development studio for the price of £1, receiving also a £50,000 interest-free loan from Rage in exchange for taking over responsibility for the studio's current debts and payroll obligations.

"Receivers were called in to take hold of Rage Software when the bank called in its loan. The Finnegans (among others) also helped finance a management buy-out of their Warrington Studio, fronted by Colin Bell and Don Whiteford. The resulting company is named Juice Games". This and similar allegations were thrown about at the time that the group may have used inside information to manipulate the receiver, preventing creditors from obtaining due recompense.

For the record, all of Warrington's staff were made redundant along with those of the other Rage studios soon after the company entered receivership, and the receiver lost no time in selling off the technology and game they had been working on (a licenced Lamborghini racing title) to Electronic Arts. This can be confirmed with Ernst and Young, the appointed receivers, who were not interested in a buy-out as they could earn more value for creditors by selling the technology. Receivers like Ernst and Young cannot be manipulated as suggested: it would break their codes of conduct. EA never developed the game further, it is believed they thought if they had the rights to the game the team would follow, but the bond within the team was stronger than that- quite a few of them had already stayed together when the previous incarnation of the studio, then known as "Digital Image Design" (or DID), had moved en masse from Infogrames to Rage a few years previously

Also for the record Colin Bell resigned as development director of Rage late in the previous year, after the company was forced to close its Sheffield Studio (a decision forced upon them through lack of capital, although the studio had only just completed its first Xbox title).

Colin Bell and Don Whiteford created a business plan for an entirely new studio and sought to finance the venture and secure jobs for as many of those made redundant as possible. Paul Finnegan and his wife decided to take the risk and back the venture with their own money along with that from other investors including Fund 4 Games. The group was fortunate in being able to secure the services of talented former Warrington Studio staff and quickly sold the concept of "Juiced" to Acclaim. The studio then developed a brand-new cross-platform technology designed to accommodate next-gen platforms when they arrived.

Juice weathered another storm as Acclaim went bust, largely due to sound financial planning, the value of the IP and the quality of the financiers. THQ bought the title and bought its expertise to bear, pushing the title to a number one slot in the UK charts and securing sales of over 1.5 million by April 2006.

Partial Rage ludography

See also

Defunct computer and video game companies

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Rage Software".

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