Rumors are swirling the internet this morning that the Activision owned Bizarre Creations has closed up shop completely and has laid off 200 staff in the process.
Bizarre Creations was bought by Activision in 2007 and has since developed games like Blur and James Bond: Blood Stone. The studio is known for arcade style games such as Geometry Wars, The Club, and the Project Gotham Racing franchise for the Xbox. According to Giant Bomb, the studio is undergoing a “90-day consultation period, statutory redundancy.”
The news of its closure comes a week after the studio released James Bond: Blood Stone, which scored a 4/5.
Activision has released the following statement about Bizarre:
Over the past three years since our purchase of Bizarre Creations, the fundamentals of the racing genre have changed significantly. Although we made a substantial investment in creating a new IP, Blur, it did not find a commercial audience. Bizarre is a very talented team of developers, however, because of the broader economic factors impacting the market, we are exploring our options regarding the future of the studio, including a potential sale of the business.