Zoo captures Empire's catalogue

Although not all of the games industry is feeling the pinch of the credit crunch, others have lost substantial sums of money, or worse, have even gone bankrupt. Another casualty of the current economic climate is Empire Interactive, which recently filed for administration, blaming "trading losses, development spend, and a delay in recent new product" for the action. A total of 49 staff were made redundant, though several have been kept on to aid KMPG, which will be handling the administration, in its restructuring efforts.

Though operations at Empire are winding down, the company's intellectual property and publishing rights have found a home at New World IP and Zoo Publishing. Zoo has recently released several games including Jelly Belly: Ballistic Beans, Smiley World Island Challenge, and the upcoming Garfield Gets Real.

Empire was one of the UK's longest-running games companies, having been operating for 22 years, and released a range of games, including Pipe Mania, International Cricket Captain 2009, and most notably the Flat-Out series of over-the-top racing games. They were also working on the upcoming Animal Paradise Wild for the Nintendo DS and Martian Panic for the Wii.