Real Time Worlds

Realtime Worlds

Former type	Private
Industry	Video games
Founded	2002
Defunct	2010
Headquarters	Dundee, Scotland, UK
Key people	Gary Dale (CEO)
Products	Crackdown (2007) APB (June 2010)
Number of employees	200+ (before layoffs)
Website	http://realtimeworlds.com/

Realtime Worlds Ltd was a video game developer based in Dundee, Scotland from 2002 until its closure in September 2010. Realtime Worlds was the largest independent game developer in Scotland with over 200 employees as well as a small Boulder, Colorado office.

Realtime Worlds was founded in early 2002 by David Jones (formerly of DMA Design) who developed the popular franchises Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and Lemmings. Much of the initial workforce was previously employed at Rage Software, as Rage Games (Scotland). During this period the core team who would go on to form Realtime Worlds developed first-person shooter game Mobile Forces for Microsoft Windows. Upon the demise of Rage Software, Dave Jones bought out Rage Games (Scotland) to form Realtime Worlds.

On 11 December 2006, New Enterprise Associates announced an investment of 30 million US dollars into Realtime Worlds.

Their first release under the name Realtime Worlds was the critically acclaimed 2007 action-adventure third-person sandbox game Crackdown, an Xbox 360 exclusive title. In 2010, they released a massively multiplayer online game for Microsoft Windows, titled APB (All Points Bulletin), which had been in development for five years, and was hoped to generate upwards of "hundreds of millions of pounds".

In 2007, at Develop magazine's Industry Excellence Awards, the company was nominated in a record-breaking seven categories, and took home the awards for Innovation and New UK/European Studio. Company chairman Ian Hetherington was also crowned Development Legend. At the 2007 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Video Game Awards ceremony, Crackdown was nominated in five categories and won two, for Action and Adventure and Use of Audio. In 2008, Crackdown was honored as Best Debut by the GDC's Game Developers Choice awards.