Lego pulling the plug on Lego Universe. The kid-friendly mmog in January offline. The American ontwikkelstudio is lifted and a part of the marketing team in Denmark loses his job. In total, disappearance of 115 jobs.
The servers of Lego Universe go on January 31, 2012 offline, reports the Danish speelgoedconcern. Lego is forced the servers to shut it down, because there is not enough players for the game to be profitable. According to Jesper Vilstrup, ceo of Lego, the free playable mmog 2 million active users. That delivers, however, is not enough. “We have not succeeded in providing a satisfactory business model around the game to build, so we have decided to make the game close.” That comes at the expense of the remaining workers in the U.s. Play Well Studios, developer of the game. There disappear also jobs in the marketing department in Denmark.
Lego bought the rights to the game in February, publisher Gazillion and took at the same time, also Play Well Studios. After the acquisition was already a part of the team on the street. The acquisition followed the release of Lego Universe, at the end of 2010. The development of the game was not flawless. In the first planned release for mid-2008 on the agenda. The release was then delayed a couple of times.