Our friend Kaid is always good for digging up news oddments and breaking info... the snippet he linked today was woefully lacking in frilly pantaloons and you-tube antics though.

No indeed, today's news resounded like a funeral bell, being rung by Schild of F13.net, one of our long-time favorite cynic sites:

In a piece entitled: "The Short and Morbid Tale of Sigil" a scene is described yesterday afternoon where a number of Sigil employees were sent outside of the building and were fired on the spot.

The numbers are large or small or most or some, depending on who is speculating, but I prefer to wait for the official announcement, which will be made today, in theory.

Like Schild, I expect all the SoE-bashers to lay the blame at the feet of the behemoth, but keep in mind that Sigil always fiercely maintained its independence and arms-length relationship with SoE. The closest they came was in negotiating inclusion in the Station Pass program. Sony Online Entertainment does not own Sigil, although a number of employees moved to join the young company, headed up by Brad McQuaid.

It is not uncommon for a large portion of the dev team to be let go when a game goes live, when duties are turned over to the "live team", but it does not usually come as suddenly and sharply as this event at Sigil.

There have been rumblings for some time that Vanguard had fallen far short of expectations in this highly competitive marketplace, but obtaining hard numbers is of course impossible.

It sounds bad, and we'll keep an eye out for updates.

~Brasse

UPDATE: here is the official press release from SoE on their aquisition of Sigil. It sounds so neat and tidy, doesn't it?