Studio co-founder axed for â??insubordinationâ??

Dave Allen fired at Quest Online

Dave Allen has allegedly been fired as president and co-founder from developer Quest Online.

The vacant role he left was promptly filled by Battlecruiser franchise creator Derek Smart.

The company recently released a statement announcing the departure of Allen, yet his replacement Derek Smart suggested that the departure was far from amicable.

"Dave Allen didn’t ‘depart’." he said. "I fired him back in February for insurbordination and for acting against the best interests of the company, the LLC investors, the game, and the team."

Those accusations remain unconfirmed.

Smart also confirmed that former director of development Jason Blood and director of design Hue Henry have also left Quest Online. The running of the company is now being handled by co-founder Greg Wexler and himself.

Smart was hired by Quest Online last December to aid in Alganon’s development post-launch. Shortly afterwards Allen was deemed “ungovernable” demoted to COO, before being fired for an undisclosed event.

The game itself is now undergoing significant alterations before an April 8 re-launch. It will no longer be a subscription game, but will be free to setup with purchaseable upgrades available afterwards.

According to Smart, user-interface changes have also been made in order to more obviously separate the design of Alganon from World of Warcraft.

Finally, the dev team are working on fixing game bugs and disabling failing features added later. Smart has stated that he is not certain of Alganon’s future, but has given assurances that Quest Online will do what it can to rescue the project.

"If you know anything about my industry career in gaming, then you already know that I value the people who keep me doing this," said Smart.

"So if you stick with this game, I will take it as far as I can and with everything at my disposal. Having a stellar team makes it that much easier because at the end of the day, a game is bigger than any one person."

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