Sources say the house that created Project Gotham Racing and Blur has been shuttered.
Bizarre Creations, the developer behind Project Gotham Racing, Blur, Geometry Wars, and the latest James Bond game, sub-titled Bloodstone, has been closed by Activision, according to a NeoGAF thread and our own confidential sources.  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.  Â
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. Â
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. Â Â
" Hey guys is Bloodstone ready? Good, lets get it shipped out. OK, the scores aren't the greatest, but they are not bad. Alright guys, good job today and also... you are all fucking fired get the fuck out of this building. NOW!!! Â I'm sure that whole ordeal went over terribly. fucking activision... "
 However, why is everyone shitting on Activison? I'm pretty sure Blur and Bloodstone didn't sell well so why would they keep Bizzare around if they just keep losing money. I don't understand why gamers take things so personal when people get fired.
The mere fact that Geometry Wars is owned by Activision now and well never see another good release makes me sick to my stomach. I hope some GOOD companies get these guys.   Remember when EA was the bad guys? Damn, I miss those days.
@JohnPaulVann: How was Blur a mistake? Did it really do that poorly? (Previous questions were legitimate, as I'm ill-informed, and not just me being an ass)
The video games industry has got to be one of the most awful industries to work in. Everything is a death march. But, BC did have a good run and PGR2 was a fantastic game, sorry to see them go.
My jaw literally dropped when I saw this akin to when Grin went under.  My best to all the guys and girls at Bizarre. That's a lot of talent out in the wild now, surely they can't stay unemployed for long.
Real bummer. After beating Blur, I watched the end credits (they were pretty cool), and one of the credits was "Blur Babies", listing all the babies that were born during the development of the game. there were a lot of names....all these people have to support families, I really hope they land on their feet.
To anyone concerned about the future of geometry wars, remember that its basically a one man project conceved and programmed by Stephen Cakebread. I would love to see him start up a indie game studio or something and continue making absurdly awesome dual joystick shooters, then at least something good will come out of this. Off course this is sad news nonetheless, people loosing their jobs always sucks. Â
This is fucking terrible! Those guys and girls did great work most of the time and they shouldn't have been shut down just because they shipped one game that wasn't so hot and didn't want to port guitar hero or call of duty games.
Well Blur was a failure (commerically) and Blood Stone seems pretty dead so not a huge surprise but still completely sucks. Â Now for the mandatory... "Fuck you Activision!"
This is like a pinata bursting and, hopefully, other dev houses scramble over each other to pick up the loose candy. Condolences either way to a solid team.
Best thing that can come out of this is that most of the studio gets together and forms a new studio. Microsoft owns the PGR name so they could make another.
Awful decision by Activision. I was really looking forward to a new Geometry Wars but I guess that Bobby Kotick didn't see the potential of selling a activision made peripheral or a subscription service with their games.
Activision make hundreds of millions on MW2 then decimate Infinity Ward. Black Ops does well so they take out Bizzare. Any guesses which studio's going to get the chop when WOW:Cataclysm sells bucketloads?
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