It hasn’t been a good year for video game developers and publishers, and we’re just now at the end of February! There have been over 7000 job layoffs in the first two months, with 5400+ coming in January, and just this past week, another 1600 have been added to that! This is affecting companies in various ways, and they have to adapt to their new situations if they can. An excellent example of this is Toys For Bob, a small company that Activision Blizzard had bought and recently saw some layoffs. Plus, they decided to forgo having a “formal workplace” and become an entirely work-at-home company.
That was a bold move, and they’ve now committed to making an even BOLDER move if you can believe it. On their website, they announced that they’re going independent from Activision Blizzard and won’t be confined to working on the Xbox platform anymore via their new merger.
“Over the years, we’ve inspired love, joy, and laughter for the inner child in all gamers. We pioneered new IP and hardware technologies in Skylanders. We raised the bar for best-in-class remasters in Spyro Reignited Trilogy. We’ve taken Crash Bandicoot to innovative, critically acclaimed new heights. With the same enthusiasm and passion, we believe that now is the time to take the studio and our future games to the next level. This opportunity allows us to return to our roots of being a small and nimble studio.”
While they didn’t say anything about Activision Blizzard specifically, they did note that they are open to working with Microsoft and Xbox in a “new relationship” to try to make games for them.
Even though they didn’t call out Activision Blizzard for mistreatment, what’s happened to them ever since being bought has been well documented. For example, Activision Blizzard primarily used Toys For Bob not as a game developer but as a “support studio” for a certain FPS franchise, as you all know. Yeah, that one. While that’s not unheard of, and all the big publishers do it with certain companies when possible to “lighten the load,” when that becomes their “primary function,” it can weigh on you.
It also didn’t help that Activision Blizzard clearly saw them as “expendable” when they were doing layoffs, and they weren’t giving them the chance to make games to prove their worth, and thus, they’re going independent.
What will be interesting going forward is seeing whether other companies will follow in their footsteps to be kept away from these “overlords” of the gaming industry and give them true freedom.
