Remember back in the ancient times of january 2021, when Vicarious Visions got merged into Blizzard and all your hopes about THPS 1+2 likely went down the drain? Well, Activision is back to probably kick aside your possible dreams about a Crash 5 or Spyro 4 with Toys for Bob now supporting the development of season 3 for Call of Duty: Warzone.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-04-30-activision-puts-crash-bandicoot-4-dev-toys-for-bob-on-call-of-duty-warzone-development-duty

At first I only saw TOB's tweet and thought "Well, they are just supporting for now, maybe that gives them 1-2 years before all hope's gone." but I hadn't heard of the layoffs at that point, so now I'm basically giving them six months before TOB just ceases to exist completely as a developer name.

Well that's depressing news. The worst part is obviously the layoffs, but it's also yet more evidence of where the industry is moving, which is not a place that I personally enjoy. The mobile market showed that F2P just flat out gives a bigger return on investment when you have a hit, and now the console and PC markets are leaning further and further into that.

I'm sure that Activision and EA will continue to put out some single player games, especially based on big franchises, but even those seem to be narrower and narrower in scope. The remakes of Crash, Spyro, and Tony Hawk were probably my favorite Activision projects of the last few years and they seemed to sell well, but not well enough.

At least the big Japanese publishers that remain like Square Enix and Capcom are still interested in focusing on more traditional games, and the platform holders are also doing that, so along with indies there will be enough stuff to play. Sad to see these revivals cut short though. I wish Activision would just sell the Crash and Spyro IP to Sony at this point, but who knows if Sony would even want them.

This makes me concerned for the Star Control sequel the original developers (and co-founders of Toys for Bob) Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III were working on, which finally resumed once they'd sorted out the little legal furor with Stardock about the copyright. According to the amicable resolution of that lawsuit, there was some kind of provision that meant Ford and Reiche had to wait two years until they announced anything about the project. That two year period actually ends this June, but now I'm thinking whatever they had planned going to be put on ice indefinitely due to this reshuffle.

Honestly, it kinda feels like that project was cursed from the get-go. Maybe it's best it doesn't come to fruition given Activision would no doubt get its grubby little mitts all over it. As much as I'd love another SC from the original creators, I don't my heart could take one that was permanently online, had microtransactions and F2P mechanics out the wazoo, and was surreptitiously given lootboxes after a few months of release to escape any requisite ESRB warnings about gambling.

Oof. I know a couple friends who work at Toys for Bob, hoping for the best.