[Multi] Split/Second Developer Black Rock Faces Lay-offs; Sequel Canned

[Multi] Split/Second Developer Black Rock Faces Lay-offs; Sequel Canned

Black Rock Studio, the developer behind last year's solid racing title Split/Second, will be losing around 40 employees as a result of redundancies according to an anonymous source at the Disney Interactive Studios subsidiary.

The source told Eurogamer that half of the studio's staff have had nothing to do since December because all of their game concepts have been rejected by Disney Interactive: "It seems Disney have been unable to provide us with a project to work on, and our concept pitches clearly haven't gone down well (despite there being many of them)." Such concepts included a sequel to quad-based racer Pure, as well as a sequel to Split/Second, amongst others.

It's not all bad news though: "The inactive portion of the studio has been expecting redundancies for months, so this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone. It's sad that it's come to this of course, but for many people they'll be quite happy to take the money and go, as they've been sitting around doing nothing for months," said the source. He also stated that the rest of the studio's staff have actively been working on a project that is "new and risky, so I imagine [Disney] don't want to risk putting two teams on it."

Split/Second gained impressive reviews last year, currently sporting a Metacritic rating of 84, and sold about 900,000 copies on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Written by: Mike Glubish

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