Publisher tells Develop it had 'a lot of leads but no interested parties'; Bizarre 'has indicated it will accept recommendation'
Bizarre Creations' chances of being bought by another company were shattered today, as Activision issued to the group a recommendation for studio closure.
It means the Liverpool-based studio's likelihood of running under a new publisher is now almost certainly over.
Bizarre staff have indicated they will accept the recommendation, an Activision executive told Develop.
Last year the studio housed around 200 staff.
Coddy Johnson, Activision Worldwide Studios’ chief operating officer, said the publisher had “looked at all options” before recommending to close the group.
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He told Develop: “I want to be clear, our first choice was to try and keep this group together and find a buyer for the studio."
“This decision comes after a few months of exhausted examination of a number of different options across the board.”
He added: “We of course care about this team. We’re offering the studio as many resources as possible, including counselling, external placement services and external career fairs.”
In November, Bizarre was put in a 90 day consultation period, giving Activision the option to close the studio or sell it to another group.
Develop discovered that, just a day after Activision revealed its intention to sell the business, a number of companies were interested in acquiring the group. An anonymous source from inside the studio said “there’s multiple parties interested in buying us.”
But talks in acquiring the studio from Activision appear to have fallen through.
Today Johnson told Develop the group has “explored a lot of leads – pretty much anyone you can imagine in the industry”.
“But unfortunately, so far we’ve not been able to find any interested parties. So we’ve made as a last resort, a recommendation to the team for closure,” he added.
Activision's decision to consider Bizarre’s closure came after disappointing sales of the studio’s key project, Blur.
Activision said at the time that, “although we made a substantial investment in creating a new IP, Blur, it did not find a commercial audience.”
At the time of going to press, the consoltation period is still technically ongoing - it is thought Bizarre will accept the recommendation to close.
*raises glass*
What a shame. Still, their projects can now be sent abroad. No doubt the next PGR will be made by a Canadian studio.
Did they even try and sell Blur? I've never heard of it and generally like their games. The Bond:Blood Stone one was the best Bond game in years.
If I'd heard of Blur I'd probably have given it a spin.
It's a shame Blur didn't do well it's a fantastic game. Best wishes Ti the bizarre team your are all awesome!!
We'll always have Metropolis Street Racer.
It's a shame EA won't pick them up, but they've got Criterion.
But this feels like Sega Racing Studios all over again. :(
It's a shame, but Blur was damn awful, and was out competing against a much stronger racer in split second. It's a real shame that just on the basis of the sales from 1 game they close the studio though, as clearly they've got a superb track record behind them.
It is quite shame that Bizarre is having to close. Here's hoping the staff find better employment than having to turn to SCEE Studio Liverpool and their blatant nepotism.
**** you Activision.
come on Sony, just spend a couple of millions, buy the studio, give them a naughty dog graphic engine, support the team with some of your tech guys, and there you have, a first party studio for not that expensive, with great staff, ready to give us some exclusive ps3 games.
Still not convinced, Sony ? just open a paypal account, for donations, i'll help you buy the studio with whatever i can donate. but please buy them, those guys will be happy to be "saved" by Sony, and will work hard to thank you, and i'm sure in 2 years, we'll have another excellent ps3 exclusive game, running on our dead Ps3.
at the bottom, i meant "on our DEAR Ps3", not "dead". sorry
The original owner must have a few million spare. Surely he could buy it back at a knock down price.
This never would have happened if geometry wars 2 had online muliplayer!
If these are indeed the guys responsible for Geometry Wars than I am completely saddened by this news....
With change comes opportunity, I would tell the guys to keep their heads up and form another standalone company. However keep Activision out of the scheme... They seem to be treating developers very badly... Either way you guys need to continue to work... Geometry Wars is a dream and will always be...
JayBizzle311 - Xbox 360
I'm one of the 200 affected. Some noteable c0ckups from my crude assessment
- Deciding to ship blur in the same week as Split Second and a week before Mod Nation and in the same week as Red Dead/Mario Galaxy/UFC
- Virtually no marketing for Blood Stone
- Confused marketing for Blur. What the f*** was the Block Lee/F*** You Mario Kart campaign???
- No long term planning (didn't support Studio plans)
- So called "help" from Activision Central was all counter productive. They repeat the "independent studio model" mantra but in practice, they didn't trust us at all. All they did was throw in "experts" who didn't have any talent or credibility (apart from one or two) but the rest was all executed so badly I couldn't believe how badly they tried to "help" us.
But Bizarre also had a share of problems too:
- 200+ staff with many "old timers" on high salary being average at best
- We made PGR and we're great attitude leading to not understand who the game was targetted at
- No real worldclass design or production talent
It's sad to see the studio being shut down, but at the end of the say, Activision saw a declining racing market and didn't beleive Bizarre could break the NFS market. I'm breaking rank with this one, but sadly, I agree with their judgement.
What this article says to me is that the offers being made to Activision were not to "their" pleasing. Which is bloody shocking! These guys are going to get absorbed into the market and with 200+ staff just falling in there is going to lead to yet more confusion in the job market!
These guys deserve better! UK industry is officially seeing the kicking of a limetime and nothing seems to be even remotely close to a life line available. What are potential developers meant to do when the big guys are going under?
Where does this leave everybody else because when a titan falls everybody knows it ripples far and wide not much in the UK is going to be untouched by this ridiculous choice by Activision. NFS is just finding its legs again but PGR and Blur offered experiences unique to Bizarre and their wonderful work.
I would imagine the competition will be having a watchful eye on the prize here looking to grab what developers they can in the wake of what I would describe as "The day the UK game industry begins to die"...
Best luck to Bizarre I hope you manage to salvage some sort of good out of this Publisher/Developer shenanigans.
I'm form a new up and coming UK studio and I won't let the UK games industry Die we use to be 3rd in the world now we like 10th I will help the UK get back on top!
In my opinion they should go to Sony and develop an all new franchise for the PS3. Sony treats their game studios good and give them enough time to develop their games. And for Sony it would be a really great and subtle way to show MS the middel finger. ;-)
It's interesting to hear from Mr. ZDM on the in going or out goings (though i'd hazard if actual identity was found you be given a nasty hand slap) The ones from the Activision side most people see clearly, but the inner Bizarre ones are hard to hear, as once again they sound very familiar to RTW and what happened there (among other things)
I feel particularly bad that despite it being in Liverpool (I'm a Man Utd fan) I had long dreamed of working for bizarre and help them continue their fantastic racing revolution.
Hopefully a new studio rises and doesn't just get people mismashed and absorbed into random companies, but I can understand the need to work.
I wonder how many of the 200 will end up at Activision owned companies?
You are obviously not a member of staff at Bizarre, for a start it is not Block lee, it is Brock lee hence why he was a cartoon broccoli. Also your description of staff being average "old timers" on a high salary. You have obviously never stepped foot in this talented studio in your life. STFU
