According to a latest article from Gamepro.com, Vivendi has shut down Sierra.  It's indeed a sad day to see the once mighty adventure game giant has been put to sleep, and it signals the end of an era.  This also caused a massive layoff of 350 company employees.  You can read the entire article below:

"News by: Funky Zealot
Posted: 06/22/04

PC gamers who played games back in the 80's received sad news yesterday--Vivendi Universal Games announced that it has cut 350 staff and shut down Seattle-based Sierra. The company was one of the most respected in the 80's and into the 90's, creating adventure games such as Kings Quest, Quest for Glory, Leisure Suit Larry, as well as Red Baron, Aces of the Pacific, and Aces Over Europe (from now defunct flight sim studio Dynamix). The brand will still exist in name only, with Sierra games Half-Life 2, Ground Control II and Tribes: Vengeance being developed by other teams within Vivendi. As a result of the restructuring, the Hoyle card game franchise has been cancelled.
"Restructuring the organization and reducing our cost base are necessary to improve our operating effectiveness and profitability," said VU Games CEO Bruce Hack, in as terse a manner as possible. "This constitutes another important step in our turnaround plan aimed to better position the company for growth."

Despite having to make substantial cuts to its workforce, VU Games expects strong sales for the second half of 2004 with Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, and recently released The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay."

Today, Jane's official website has been posted with a few headlines.  First, the much anticipated new game from Jane, Gary Matter (aka Project Jane-J) has been put on hold indefinitely.  However, it appears that there's still a good chance the game will be back in production in the future.  We can only hope that this will eventually come true.

Jane is instead working on a new title Booby Trap!, which is being developed by Oberon Media, a company Jane co-founded.  The game is said to be a puzzle-adventure game, similar to the company's other game, Inspector Parker.

Last but not least, congratulation to Jane , as her latest novel, Dante's Equation has been nominated for the Philip K Dick award's best science fiction book of 2003.

Adventure Gamers' feature article on the Gabriel Knight series.  You can read it here.
 

Just Adventure + has posted an interview with Jane's husband, Robert Holmes, who's also responsible for writing the music for all the GK games.  Click here to read it.

The complete walkthrough for GK3 has been added.