Embracer Group Closes TimeSplitters Authors Studio and Fires Half of Chorus Developers
The Swedish Embracer Group holding continues to close some subsidiaries and reduce staff in others. The list of studios that suffered from the restructuring of the company included Free Radical Design and Fishlabs.
Chorus
Possible closure of Free Radical Design
According to the Video Games Chronicle portal, the studio may close on December 11. This is stated in an email that Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors sent to Free Radical Design employees.
"This is a difficult time for all of us. Especially for you. Our goal is to provide you with maximum support during this period," Wingefors wrote.
Formally, Free Radical Design can still avoid closure. According to the Video Games Chronicle, British law obliges the management of the Embracer Group and Free Radical Design to consult with employees for at least 30 days and try to find a way not to close the studio. One of the possible options is to sell Free Radical Design.
However, apparently, the employees of Free Radical Design do not expect a successful outcome. Recently, more than 55 out of 100 specialists have updated their LinkedIn profiles and started looking for work.
Neither Embracer Group nor Free Radical Design have publicly commented on the Video Games Chronicle information.
Free Radical Design is a British developer, known primarily for the TimeSplitters series of shooters. The studio was originally founded in 1999. In 2008, she was on the verge of bankruptcy and soon joined Crytek. In 2014, the studio was again not in the best position and Crytek decided to close it, and transfer most of the team to Dambuster Studios.
In 2021, Embracer Group rediscovered Free Radical Design specifically to develop a new game within the TimeSplitters franchise.
Layoffs at Fishlabs
The Eurogamer portal was the first to report on layoffs at the German Fishlabs studio, citing sources close to the studio. His information was later confirmed by Plaion, the company that owns the studio. According to a Plaion representative, 50 people were fired from Fishlabs, — before that 95 people worked in the studio.
The reason for the layoffs is that the studio failed to impregnate an unannounced game codenamed Project Black and find funding for it.
It should be noted that at the beginning of the year, the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection provided Fishlabs with a subsidy of €5.52 million. This money was supposed to go just for the development of Project Black.
Fishlabs opened in 2004. The studio has been specializing in mobile games for a long time. In particular, she created a series of space simulators Galaxy on Fire. She also helped third-party studios port games to the console. Her last original project was the action game Chorus, released in 2021 on PC, PlayStation and Xbox.
