Embracer Group is again within the information once more, with a brand new report suggesting Free Radical, the studio behind the traditional TimeSplitters, is liable to closure.
In what has been a frankly horrendous 12 months for sport improvement, not less than for these contained in the trade, alongside comes a report that Free Radical Design – the studio behind, amongst different issues, the traditional TimeSplitters shooter collection – could possibly be liable to closure.
The story comes from VGC’s reliably well-connected Andy Robinson, who says staff on the Nottingham-based studio have been notified of its potential closure. This is backed up by various employees on the studio saying they’re actively searching for work on such websites as LinkedIn and X/Twitter.
If Free Radical does certainly shut, it’ll mark the tip of a studio that has, in a single type or one other, survived in a aggressive trade for properly over 20 years. It was based in 1999 by former builders at Rare, which is why its debut title, the fast-paced first-person shooter TimeSplitters, had a lot in widespread with GoldenEye 007 – in lots of respects, it was a non secular continuation of that pivotal console sport.
Free Radical suffered a significant wobble in 2008 with its bold but flawed shooter, Haze, printed by Ubisoft. Its industrial failure noticed Free Radical purchased up by Crytek and renamed Crytek UK in 2009; issues took a rosier flip simply two years in the past, when Swedish firm Embracer Group snapped up the studio, restored its Free Radical Design title, and introduced two of its co-founders again into the fold.
For the previous couple of years, Free Radical has been quietly beavering away at a brand new TimeSplitters – the primary of its type since 2005. VGC’s report now places the way forward for that mission into severe doubt.
It’s been a rocky 12 months for Embracer Group, with the collapse of a $2bn deal with an unspecified firm (considered a Saudi-backed agency, Savvy Games) forcing it to hurriedly restructure and reduce prices. Among the victims of these cuts are Volition, the storied developer of the Saints Row collection, and a number of employees at Tomb Raider studio Crystal Dynamics. It was reported in June that a number of unnamed sport tasks had been cancelled by Embracer; it’s doable that TimeSplitters could also be amongst them.
Here’s hoping that, if Free Radical is to shut, these affected will discover new jobs shortly.
