Eurogamer has received reports that Black Rock Studio, a subsidiary of Disney Interactive are preparing to lay off approximately half of their workforce today. An anonymous source within Black Rock has said “it’s rumoured at Black Rock that there will be voluntary redundancies tomorrow – roughly 40, with the aim of reducing the studio to a single game team.”
Brighton-based Black Rock were responsible for Pure, the criminally underrated quad-bike racer in 2008 and of course last year’s fantastic Split/Second.
The source went on to add “After Split/Second wrapped, we started work on SS2 pre-prod which was cancelled last December due to DIS’s new management and their changing priorities (the push towards freemium etc) – SS2 didn’t really fit in with that (despite some efforts to shoehorn it in).
“We had a concept week (everyone in the studio working on small teams) to try to come up with new ideas, but nothing really stuck. We had a freemium week sometime later with similar goals too. “The inactive portion of the studio has been expecting redundancies for months, so this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It’s sad that it’s come to this of course, but for many people they’ll be quite happy to take the money and go, as they’ve been sitting around doing nothing for months.”
It’s not all doom and gloom however as the source went on to reveal that the remainder of the team were working on a promising title that is new and risky, sadly, probably too risky for Disney to risk two teams working on it.
With Bizarre Creations closing down altogether and Motorstorm Apocalypse not really troubling the sales charts (albeit with mitigating circumstances surrounding its release) these Black Rock layoffs and cancelled projects come in a period when the arcade racing genre seems to be finding it tough going finding the audiences of the past. Although EA seem to be keeping the flag flying, using the Need for Speed brand to lighten the wallets of gamers three times in this 12 month period.
Source: Eurogamer.
MrSpeedyGonzales
Sad to hear, but it seems like arcade racers have had their day in the eyes on the customer. Even though the games being produced are extremely good and have world wide praise…..shame.
Smallville2106
Real shame for the people involved. Here’s hoping they get more work ASAP.
aerobes
Really bad news as usual but this is even worse because they actually make great games. Split/Second 2 would’ve definitely been bought by me.
scavenga
SS is to me the best racer on the PS3 to date, as it was actually fun to play as well as gorgeous to look at.
Best of luck to all, hope you’ll do fine!
hazelam
it’s always sad to hear about developers being forced to lay people off.
here’s hoping those affected can find new jobs sooner rather than later.
AlexRoz
Awh man, I really like really loved Pure. It was awesome to get back into the ATV racing again since ATV Off Road Fury 4. I hope they can pull of another Pure :)