According to a source, Bizarre Creations will be going through a "90-day consultation period, statutory redundancy." The NeoGAF thread on this subject states that all 200 or so staff at the studio have been made redundant. Bizarre employees have known about today's closure for just about three hours.
A press release about this is said to be forthcoming.
UPDATE:Joystiq has a bit of clarification on the "90-day consultation, statutory redundancy" thing. Bizarre is sorta in the process of closing. This 90-day period gives notice to employees that a company is going to be shuttered or sold or downsized.
UPDATE 2: Shacknews and other websites have received the following boilerplate from Activision regarding this. Just to be extra clear, our sources believed Bizarre was toast at the time we reported this. It appears now, though, that the studio isn't closing immediately as was feared. It's possible that within this 90-day period someone can buy Bizarre and save the jobs that were supposedly made redundant.
Over the past three years since our purchase of Bizarre Creations, the fundamentals of the racing genre have changed significantly. Although we made a substantial investment in creating a new IP, Blur, it did not find a commercial audience. Bizarre is a very talented team of developers, however, because of the broader economic factors impacting the market, we are exploring our options regarding the future of the studio, including a potential sale of the business.
I think the demo of Blur probably impacted it's sales quite a bit, almost because it was too good. I played that demo for hours and hours, and once I was done I felt like Blur had little else to offer. Crackdown syndrome.
Still, it's a huge shame that Bizarre is going bust. Their games had always been of a high quality :(
I don't mean to get on the old sticking-it-to-the-man/hipster mobile here, but I fucking hate activition at the moment. PGR4 is one of my favourite games of all time, and activition are dicks for not giving them more of a chance. They only made Blur, Bloodstone and GW2 under activition, right? Blur had shit publicity and was released at the wrong time, bloodstone was pretty much a stop gap until the next bond filmgame comes out, and GW2 came at a time when dual stick shooters have been done to death. I'm ranting now(and probably not making much sense), but its annoying when stuff like this happens.
Apparently their primary reason for selling to Activision was for their staff's job security, they made like two games and within the same year as those two games were released are now finished.
Capitalism is gross when applied to entertainment. The ability to provide for one's family and flourish as a company are fine motivators but when every title is valued in exactly its profit it loses some of its charm. Reviews even, matter only in how they influence the part of the graph that is consumers apparently.
They don't even give series' a chance at being truly great, they oversaturate the ones that appeal to people, they kill the ones that don't immediately sell gangbusters.
I would be annoyed at Black Ops and Treyarch but I imagine that's a good game, and they're a good developer (slightly hard to tell), though I'm sure Call of Duty will be dead soon; Activision can't have nice things for too long before breaking them, just a matter of time. Treyarch also made a bad James Bond game mind; except they had experience copying Call of Duty 4.
I'll make sure to NEVER buy bad Activision games. If Black Ops wasn't a good game I'd be pretty mad. My family bought me Black Ops for christmas and they wouldn't know how good it is, it's just the new "Call of Duty" game. Depressing.
Activision: did we publish your game and it didn't sell 1 billion copies and/or can't be exploited year after year? if so, don't come in on Monday.....kthx
I missed 4 but Project Gotham was one of the few racing series I really enjoyed. Sorry to see Bizarre go. Hopefully everyone will find a place to work soon, especially with the holidays coming up.
No thats's not cool Bizarre Creations is too good to be closed :( If I had like a few million dollars I would buy them but since I don't I hope Microsoft, Sony, or EA swoops in.
I already made the point of their new IP Racing Game coming out in the same 3-Week period as the other two big Racing games this year, but it just occurred to me that their second game, a James Bond game, was released on the same day as their other James Bond game. I don't think it would have been a blockbuster hit no matter when it was released, but couldn't there be a better release window?
Because if you ran a game studio that produced a game at a huge loss to you, you'd let them stay around, right? I'm not saying it isn't sad to see Bizarre closing down, but with Blur's failure at the market and Blood Stone's... nonexistent audience, really, that's two games that are going to do pretty badly in one year. It's a financial thing. "
No doubt. But it is up to the publisher to make sure a game sells. That's their job. Unfortunately unless it's another FPS Activision are (and have always been) incapable of properly marketing their products.
Also let us not forget the part that Activision's constant stream of poor quality tosh that they shat out in the 80's was part of the reason behind the video game crash of the early-mid eighties. Though obviously they were not solely responsible, Atari et' al have a lot to answer for too.
That is some sad news indeed. I liked the work they did with Blur and PGR was always a fun game to play back in the day, I guess not much progress was being made.
" Fuck. British development industry has seriously taken some beatings this year. Two development closures in Liverpool alone, and the whole fiasco with Realtime Worlds. 2010 has not been a good year for us. At least Criterion seem to be standing on firm ground. I'll certainly be offering my support by buying a copy if NFS:HP on Friday. "
That, along with Dirt 3 from Codemasters whenever that comes along. Very happy to support the UK gaming developers. "
This is complete bull. Blur was a fantastic and refreshing racer, and the fact that it didn't find, "a commercial audience" is Activation's own fault, for a weak advertising campaign. This whole thing in itself, is redundant, for Activision, the gaming industry's largest publisher, is filthy rich enough to either expand Bizarre or leave it the hell alone. I goddamn hate Activision. All the while, Kotick gets richer and fatter as more and more drones flock to purchase their copies of Call of Duty. Capitalism. It ruins everything.
Its easy to see why they were shut down but I would have thought Activision would have kept them for at least one more game since they haven't owned them that long.
Damn. I've been a big fan of Bizarre since Metropolis Street Racer back on the Dreamcast, and I absolutely loved the PGR series. Geometry Wars is some of the most frustrating fun I've had in a while, and Blur was pretty fun. This really sucks.
@Nictel: Good point though it seems like compared to other games like Black Ops, they really ditched marketing Blur/Bloodstone to the same degree. Maybe it was more over in the UK but here if I wasn't going to a few different game sites, I'd barely see any advertising on it.
I cant wait until 10 years from now when Activision runs itself into the ground because to stupid decisions like this one along with every other decision they ever make.
The only game I bought from them was Geometry Wars 2, but I still know that they're a fantastic developer and this really fucking sucks. Maybe another spin-off studio with EA in the near future?
Also, when is Activision just going to change it's name to Call of Duty Inc. I mean, they never give any other IP a chance. Sad to see EA go down while they just go up. Hopefully COD does a full Guitar Hero again and they flop. But, by then they'll just have another thing to milk.
By "statutory redundancy", do they mean "mandatory layoffs"? Companies need to stop being so fucking cryptic and just say what they're doing. It's even worse than "human resources", when they mean "Personel".
Because if you ran a game studio that produced a game at a huge loss to you, you'd let them stay around, right? I'm not saying it isn't sad to see Bizarre closing down, but with Blur's failure at the market and Blood Stone's... nonexistent audience, really, that's two games that are going to do pretty badly in one year. It's a financial thing. "
No doubt. But it is up to the publisher to make sure a game sells. That's their job. Unfortunately unless it's another FPS Activision are (and have always been) incapable of properly marketing their products. Also let us not forget the part that Activision's constant stream of poor quality tosh that they shat out in the 80's was part of the reason behind the video game crash of the early-mid eighties. Though obviously they were not solely responsible, Atari et' al have a lot to answer for too. It's just a shame to see the signs again. "
Not true. They're perfectly capable of marketing six Guitar Hero games in a single year, as they did last year. Trust me, if Activision had wanted to keep Bizarre's games publicized, they could have.
Although I definitely saw plenty of advertising for Blur (more than for Split/Second or for ModNation Racers, by a long shot) they definitely didn't market Blood Stone at all.
I get that the racing genre is waning in the presence of all these action, adventure, RPG, and FPS games, but I really think that the racing juggernaut GT5 could maybe revive interest in it. Maybe not like SF4 for fighting games but it could spark reinterest in it. So having Bizzare Creations around would not have hurt that much. I mean it's Activision, the publisher who owns the multimillion dollar laying chicken know as Call of Duty. It's not like they can't afford to keep them around and hell, maybe help market their games.
Terrible news. I don't know what kind of sales performance Activision expected from a new IP in Blur, and a Bond game released independently of a film. Best of luck to everyone involved, hopefully another publisher will buy them.
" Fuck. British development industry has seriously taken some beatings this year. Two development closures in Liverpool alone, and the whole fiasco with Realtime Worlds. 2010 has not been a good year for us. At least Criterion seem to be standing on firm ground. I'll certainly be offering my support by buying a copy if NFS:HP on Friday. "
That, along with Dirt 3 from Codemasters whenever that comes along. Very happy to support the UK gaming developers. "
I think a lot of the Wipeout team was let go too. "
Activision Blizzard aren't making enough money from world of warcraft and COD to keep a great studio like Bizzare creations running? Seriously! What The Fuck?. I mean EA Fired some people from Various Studios, but they did not shut it down altogether. Jesus Christ!
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