Report: U.S. Buyer Completes Purchase Of Realtime Worlds' MyWorld

An anonymous U.S. buyer has completed the purchase of Project MyWorld, the 3D virtual world platform in development by recently collapsed studio, Realtime Worlds, according to a report by European-based website Develop. However, it is still not understood whether the buyer has purchased just the MyWorld IP and game build, or will be taking on the remaining staff on the project in order to form a new spin-off studio. The news comes a fortnight after it was announced that Realtime had hired back 23 developers who had previously been laid off days before the company went into administration. According to the Develop report, the MyWorld project is 'not too far from passing final milestones', although an anonymous poster in the comments for the story claimed: '[MyWorld is] a long way from being close to a releasable product. Probably at least nine months to a year would be needed to make it something people would want to use.' Administrators Begbies Traynor had expressed some surprise at the level of interest in the MyWorld project, having expected Realtime's APB property, which administrators say enjoys a player base of around 130,000 players, to be the IP to sell the business. Joint administrator Ken Pattullo said: "As a smaller entity MyWorld is attracting considerable interest from potential buyers and 23 members of the team who had been working on the project clearly add value to it as a standalone business." It was previously speculated that Realtime Worlds bosses Ian Hetherington and Dave Jones were trying to buy MyWorld out of administration.