Kotaku Australia has a follow-up on yesterday's reports that cuts are coming at Australian developer Auran (story), quoting CEO Tony Hilliam who paraphrases Mark Twain in stating that rumors of the company's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Mr. Hilliam's statement does not actually refute the report, which states that Fury has had disappointing sales, that staff cuts are coming, that Tantalus will hire some of the displaced staff, and that some Fury support will be outsourced to China, but he explains that this does not indicate the company is on the rocks. He also addresses complaints about Fury, describing plans for changes in the PvP MMOG intended to address them, which is the portion excerpted here:

Fury has been operating for 6 weeks and our first Free content update, the “Age of the Chosen” will definitely be released on December 14. Fury: AotC addresses many of the issues identified by players and reviewers in the original release. We’ve greatly enhanced the new player experience and made huge improvements to a number of systems. There will be another major FURY announcement next week about further changes that will be very exciting to all players (unless of course one of the staff under strict NDA decide to leak those details as well).

As I explained to the staff yesterday, whilst FURY has started off slower than expected, I still see a bright and long future ahead. However, that future will not include the full 60 man development team who have worked on FURY for the past year. The future will focus on a smaller, more agile core team of Fury developers. These are people who are incredibly passionate about the game and work until 4 in the morning to ensure they get things done.

FURY has been a big part of our lives and the core team will be doing everything they can to make sure it reaches its full potential. Anyone who has played a close game of Vortex or come back from 2-0 down to beat the opposing team in Elimination know of that potential. Sadly, too many players have only experienced a savage beating at the hands of veteran players. Perhaps they may pick up their bloodied corpses and return next weekend to see what we have done to help them get into the game.