This 12 months has been stuffed with dangerous online game business information. Layoffs each week. Hundreds of jobs lower. Studios closing. It’s terrible stuff. So I’m right here to share some excellent news. Toys For Bob, the studio behind Crash Bandicoot 4 and the remastered Spyro assortment, is leaving Activision and changing into an impartial studio.
In a February 29 weblog put up on its official web site, studio heads Paul Yan and Avery Lodato introduced that Toys For Bob is being spun off into an impartial recreation growth studio.
“We imagine that now could be the time to take the studio and our future video games to the subsequent stage,” defined Yan and Lodato within the put up. “This chance permits us to return to our roots of being a small and nimble studio.”
Additionally introduced within the weblog put up is the information that Toys For Bob is “exploring” a attainable partnership with Microsoft. However don’t count on the studio’s subsequent recreation anytime quickly. Toys For Bob’s heads made it clear that it’s nonetheless “within the early days” of creating its subsequent recreation and are “a methods away” from asserting something about it.
“Our mates at Activision and Microsoft have been extraordinarily supportive of our new route and we’re assured that we are going to proceed to work intently collectively as a part of our future,” stated Yan and Lodato. “So, maintain your horns on and your eyes out for extra information. Thanks to our neighborhood of gamers for at all times supporting us by our journey. We will’t wait to share updates on our new journey as an indie studio!”
As a part of this transition, it seems that on-line get together platformer Crash Team Rumble will no longer be updated with new content material.
A 35-year-old studio will get to maintain on making video games
Toys For Bob was based in California in 1989 by Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford. The studio noticed success within the early ‘90s with the discharge of Star Management and its sequel, which are sometimes thought-about a number of the finest video games ever made. Since then, it has labored on quite a few video games, huge and small.
In 2005 it was purchased up by Activision, and in 2011 it launched the primary recreation within the widespread toys-to-life sequence, Skylanders. Toys For Bob would proceed work on that sequence and would additionally remaster the primary three Spyro video games as effectively develop a brand new entry within the beloved Crash Bandicoot sequence.
Nevertheless, by 2021, the studio was tasked with supporting Name of Obligation, alongside each different developer owned by Activision. After Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard in 2023 and introduced 1,900+ layoffs, Toys For Bob was hit laborious. The studio misplaced 89 individuals and its places of work in Novato, California had been closed.
Now, nevertheless, it appears Toys For Bob will get an opportunity to reside on. That’s one thing not each recreation studio as of late will get to do and I hope it really works out effectively for the parents over there. We deserve excellent news greater than ever. I’ll take it.
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