Splash Damage has introduced a consultation course of affecting all employees on the Bromley-based studio, which can conclude with important redundancies. Workers have been notified at this time, and the information was shared publicly by way of a post on LinkedIn.
The Bromley-based studio was acquired by unnamed personal fairness traders in September, at which period it mentioned it will proceed to function below the prevailing management staff. It was beforehand owned by Chinese language conglomerate Tencent, which acquired the studio when it bought poultry agency Leyou in 2020. Leyou purchased the studio from founder Paul Wedgewood in 2016.
The studio had beforehand laid off employees initially of the yr following the cancellation of on-line motion sport Transformers: Reactivate, which was revealed in 2022 however by no means proven publicly. In 2023 it introduced it was engaged on an open-world survival sport codenamed Mission Astrid, in collaboration with streamers Christopher “Sacriel” Ball and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek.
The corporate’s final shipped sport was 2020’s Outcasters, a multiplayer shooter constructed for Google’s short-lived Stadia platform.
The information is one other hammer blow to sport improvement in London, following Sq. Enix’s current cutbacks to its Western operations inserting over 100 jobs in what was Eidos in danger. Sony closed its London studio in 2024.
Following the Tencent acquisition, CEO Richard Jolly informed Gamesindustry.biz he was “probably the most excited I’ve ever been for the place we’re headed.” However in 2024 each Tencent and rival Chinese language agency NetEase pulled back on their Western expansion, triggering a sequence of divestments and closures. Fellow Tencent-owned UK operation Sumo Group reduce 15% of employees in 2024 adopted by additional job losses in January of this yr, and offered off publishing label Secret Mode in March.
Yong-yi Zhu, VP and head of enterprise operations, technique, and compliance at Tencent Video games, informed GamesIndustry.biz in August that the corporate had “no plans in the intervening time to drag out” of Western studios, however “you may even see a discount in funding in sure places, and I feel half of that’s simply the realities of the trade and the dynamics of the trade.”
Splash Damage was based in 2001 by a staff who’d come collectively by way of the Quake modding scene, and rose to prominence with the discharge of free multiplayer title Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. It went on to create Enemy Territory: Quake Wars in 2007, Brink in 2011 and F2P launch Soiled Bomb in 2014. The studio specialised in multiplayer shooters and mode design, and previous to the Tencent acquisition was a daily collaborator with Microsoft on titles together with Gears of Battle 5 and the remasters of Gears of Battle and Halo. It produced the well-received Gears of Battle Ways in 2020.