Embracer May Soon Be Closing 'Timesplitters' Studio Free Radical Design

This series just cannot catch a break.

Dang! I had hopes of once again playing the series.

I was like 'yes, some news on Timesplitters!', but this is definitely not what I hoped for. Shame. Not the biggest FPS fan, but this series I liked on the GCN.

Oh well. Time splitters 4 was announced so long ago, I forgot it even existed till now. It's been 15 years already. It sucks, but my hype vanished already.

Just gutted. It was the best news to hear about them reforming and now Embracer have once again proven to be the most poorly run bunch of charlatans in the industry.

David Doak and many of the returning members are all class acts and this just sucks to see as it was a chance to finally get a next gen Timesplitters which likely would have really had a chance to shine if given the time to make. Curious how far into development it was and if it can be saved somehow.

So crushed to read this.

Define "Irony": TimeSplitters is probably the one IP that would have been actually profitable for them to develop and release. A LOT of gamers still remember this series fondly and would jump at the chance to play a new iteration.

"Embracer had previously acquired an absurd number of studios and properties but has since fallen on hard times", which sound like totally unrelated events, don't they?

On the one hand, I am really very tired of corpos buying everything just to shut them down, seemingly in an attempt to shut down the competition.

On the other hand, when was the last time Free Radical put out anything?

Truly this is heartbreaking news.
My inner teenage self is crying his eyes out. 😭

Friendly reminder to buy these games now.

Once again I curse at Embracer Group...

@LadyCharlie They didn't buy Free Radical. Free Radical closed down years ago. They bought TimeSplitters, then they reformed the Free Radical team to bring it back, including the original founders.

Have they made and released anything since their formation?

@Ryu_Niiyama They made an announcement they reformed since their reformation.

I had no idea they were still around. I mean, I knew they were trying to get Timesplitters going but I assumed it was from a new developer.

That's business I'm afraid.

Hope it doesn't happen, especially before Christmas.

The talent will go else where and their ideas will still be played through other games.

@dkxcalibur
If you have an Xbox One/Series S/X, TimeSplitters 2 and 3 are both available as BC titles to purchase. They sometimes go on sale too

You say "Embracer Group" and I immediately picture the swirling waters of my toilet. Round and round, down and down.

I loved TS2 and 3 so much, fantastic games. Second Sight was also highly underrated.

Dream result would be the team can buy the IP and keep going. Embracer do seem to be pretty hard up at the moment so could be open to a sale.

Embracer is literally a cancer.

oh common we have been so close to timesplitters 4 or at least a remastered trilogy... TS 2 and 3 need not much more than updated controls...

I think a new Timesplitters could have worked well as a live service game.

When I saw the thumbnail I hoped Timesplitters series got remastered with online multi.

Its not even disappointment at this point. Its that weird feeling you get while looking at someone bashing their head against the wall

It's like Embracer Group just acquires developers because they know they will fail and will have to close them down. Money doing things just to be doing things, ending up doing nothing.

I had hope hearing about Embracer buying IPs/studios years ago with the expectation that games would be made again, naively forgetting that equity groups exist to strip things for any value that can be extracted and write the rest off. There was never any credible intent to produce anything.

Of course I could say a lot of corporate folks in the video game industry seem to want to be doing anything but be involved with games, so it's hard to say that there was much to gain otherwise.

Should have re released the originals with bumped graphics. Easy pay day. Ooops 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️

They want to become the new EA hm?

@nessisonett - Not the worst, just the most recent.

How quickly we forgot THQ and Midway.

Timesplitters still holds up as a far more varied multiplayer shooter than Team Fortress 2 / Overwatch. It's bonkers how insanely well it's suited for the current market. Hell, if they made a F2P version with that live service stream of content it would sadly probably work.

Personally I'd just love the original games packaged, released on modern platform with number 2 having stage builder / online play features.

@Vexx234 Timesplitters rewind is probably our best bet now.

@Paraka Midway and THQ didn’t bank their future on blood money.

@Azuris
For all of EA's various faults, they haven't been shutting down their studios left and right.

Absolutely ridiculous the number of studios that have been bought up by large companies and then either been shut down or produce nothing or very little 😡 what an absolute waste and sad crying shame 😢

Still got my GC copies of TP2 & 3.

Sees article headline oh TimeSplitters news (never played them but still interested as playing many retro modern shooters singleplayer campaigns of 6th and 7th gen (besides Turok 2) I missed out on, no copies of TimeSplitters yet).

Seeing it ah..... that sucks. Hopefully something comes of it but if not well there goes another one. Sigh the IP/devs can't catch a break.

Well that's disappointing. As current shooters are multiplayer or had eh ideas (Halo/COD/BF I didn't care for) besides Bright Memory Infinite (the one I did care for then the big 3 or the state of XIII I read about and that's it so far).

So TimeSplitters would have been good to see have a chance of a return but nope. Sigh.

@nessisonett - THQ most definitely did.

Midway attempted to sell all their assets off to pocket the moneu to the C level employees while failing to pay anyone else.

@Paraka THQ was stupidity more than anything, banking on that uDraw tablet and other follies. Embracer openly banked on 2 billion in Saudi money and when that deal fell through, they panicked.

Timesplitters 2 is the best Sci fi game and the best fps ever made, and one of the top multiplayer games for both co op and competitive. Just buy the studio, If they're shutting it down, it's free money.

i played so much TS3 with my brother growing up, but looking back on the game its even better than i remember. amazing campaign, tons of content and characters, indepth map maker. its as if a live service game had all its content unlockable with one purchase, which is a sad comparison nowadays

Is this the same Free Radical from the Timesplitters days or not? If it is, they haven't released a game in nearly a decade. How can you keep paying them?

I don't think it would harm Nintendo's family-friendly image if they pulled another Bayonetta and saved TimeSplitters from the brink. If the Switch 2 has backwards compatibility, then there will essentially be many of those once-per-console-generation franchise entries like Mario Tennis/Golf, and Nintendo will need to fill the calendar with other things. Imagine perhaps a new Play It Loud era with more grown-up and/or action-oriented releases like Bayo, TimeSplitters, F-Zero, Sin & Punishment, Metroid, Astral Chain 2, some T-rated Murasame Castle sequel, and a XCX 4K port all in one year. Obviously not that soon, as we just had one and a half Bayo games.

Can't say I'm surprised. Aside from the obvious problem of the team signing up with a corporation that was never going to go anywhere, Timesplitters is a product of it's time. The only real thing it has going for it is the aesthetic, everything that this franchise does has been done better by both big-name companies and indies.

I love Timesplitters and was crazy enough to 100% all three games, but not everything needs to come back.

@westman98

@locky-mavo I still have GC timesplitters2 only but I really like this game. Something that old FPS have and not the new is that in multiplayer have music playing in background which is cool. In CoD etc they are silent and removed all the BGM. What a shame..

FFS we are never going to get a new Timesplitters game or even just a HD port/remaster of the old games, are we? I have been dying to have these games moved over to modern hardware, so we can play them again online, with enhancements and other improvements. It would be awesome to be able to make larger maps too and with less restrictions.

The games are still amazing in my opinion and I still regularly play both TS2 and Future Perfect (it's only been two weeks since I played both on my Gamecube).

I will dispute anyone who claims those games have aged or that there is no point in them anymore. I seriously miss these old school objective based shooters and more localised corridor based multiplayer and feel there absolutely is a place for them. The arcade and challenge modes, the numerous multiplayer options and huge amounts of unlockables just don't exist in shooters anymore.

Loved the first one on PS2 so much I burned out the console, literal smoke came out the back of it. It is a shame

@nessisonett - THQ got the go ahead from their biggest investors, one being Mattel at the time.

The moment the cracks shown, they bailed immediately. Same practice, smaller scale (in comparison, but still bad).

Not saying any of this to justify Embracer, basically making THQ Nordiq experience the same events. Just saying it happens way more than we make ourselves believe. Maybe because the social media era where everything that needs to be talked about is current and we are just risidual byproducts of it, but this strategy has happened waaay too many times in the industry.

Hell, even I forgot about Gamecock. Glorified flashbang of a company.

Had so much fun back in the day with Virus mode in this game. Truly a classic