TimeSplitters Dev Free Radical Has Shut Down As Staff Share "Last Day" Messages

Starting to feel like Embracer should be shut down, and let its studios go free. They obviously have not managed things well! Feel like they took a huge gamble on a deal and that’s ended up costing a lot of people their jobs and livelihoods. Extremely sad.

Was a massive fan of TimeSplitters 2 and Future Perfect on Gamecube, and always held out hope for #4 on a Nintendo platform. A shame this hasn't come to fruition given the intent two years ago.

This is such garbage. Just imagine if their BATTLEFRONT 3 had been released... Would have been a smash hit. This will just keep happening as more and more companies eat up smaller developers and cancel projects to cut corners. There is a reason the indie scene is doing as well as it is. Gamers just want games made with heart and not insane oversight. My heart goes out to Free Radical and their families. Thank you for all the memories.

I'm always sad to see people lose their jobs, but what was the last game they made/worked on? Fiscally they were dead weight. Anyway hope everyone lands on their feet.

The more and more I see of these beloved dev studios close the more I see that games have completely and fully tainted by corporate greed and negligence. The next video game crash is soon I’m sure. And since Nintendo is taking part in the greed of the industry they won’t come out of the ashes to save it like they did back in the 80s. They too are part of the downfall.

@Ocaz how is Nintendo doing the same things as other developers? They don't have a lot of micro-transactions. Also, they're pretty well stockpiled with investments to withstand several "Wii-U" type failures. If anything, Nintendo could exit the market and still be fine, they're flush with a lot of cash.

@Dm9982 if Embracer shuts down, those studios they purchased will go with it. Someone would have to buy out the portfolio, these wouldn't become free IPs.

@progx no I know, I just meant like let the studios go “free” as in releasing them from their current prison. You’d think there would have been some legal protection in place with these studios from Embracer messing up so badly…..

Heat death of gaming industry.

We knew it would happen eventually, with 14 years of decline. Might as well let go of hope today.

It's over, let's exhale. Don't hold it all in. Let's cry together, everyone.

Resurrected just to shut down again 2 years later, before they could even create a game. Timesplitters just can't catch a break. I also never expected GoldenEye to resurface before a Timesplitters rerelease, but here we are.

Very sad but honestly what was the last game these guys had ever released? I don't think these guys had work on anything for the past years since 2008 and it seems Embracer is just not embracing their stay. Now if only Nintendo could get these guys to join Retro Studio so we could get Metroid Prime 4 quicker that would be great.

@Ryu_Niiyama Oh come on, they were put together to work on this game and were shut down due to reasons outwith their control (Embracer banking on Saudi money which fell through). Why do you have to jump on these devs and paint them as lazy or dead weight instead of going after the mega corporation who’ve let down several devs in their short lifespan?

@Ryu_Niiyama Very low.

@Serpenterror Well, they only reformed a couple of years ago. The original Free Radical was formed of ex-Goldeneye developers from Rare and eventually became part of Crytech. This new incarnation had some of the same team.

I wonder if this is the very same group that actually worked on timesplitters? These chaps look so young to have been around way back in 2005. I was really hoping we’d get a resurgence to these great games but here we are. Maybe one day the tooth mummy will rise up from the sands of time.

@TYRANACLES It's the same group. They were infants at the time is all.

@Dm9982 these studios ceased being individual entities when Embracer bought them. They're under one umbrella. If Embracer fails, so does all the studios and IPs, they'd likely be fire sold out the door to another company. No such thing as being "set free." A group of them could conglomerate, then turn around and buy up the portfolio, but they'd likely be sold in lots.

I am actually amazed that they have still been around, Haze was apparently the last game they released... way back in 2008.

@progx Yeah it’s sucks that Embracer gobbled all these studios up only to slowly shutter all their doors. I honestly don’t understand why they’re just shuttering instead of trying to sell off. You’d think there’s more value in selling a studio/IPs than just axing the whole thing…..

@GoshJosh very low what? Is that new slang or something?

I’d like to highlight Second Sight at this moment! It’s not a masterpiece, but it was a lovely little adventure on the GameCube, and very much the type of game we all lament when we wish they made “AA” games the way they used to. What a a sad day

@Serpenterror they did work on battlefront 3 and supposedly timesplitters 4 but nothing went to market. So it looks like their last real product was under the crytek UK banner for warface. So 2014….maybe 2020 if they were called in to port the game. So no viable production in a very long time even after reformation.

Hate to see them lose their jobs. Surprised they couldn’t figure out a way to just remaster the original games for all modern systems with updated resolution and stable FPS to bring in some funds.

Maybe rare can rehire them all and make a new perfect dark.

@Dm9982 Embracer is a hedge fund, not a game company.

Sound like free radical's properties might be up for very cheap about now. Like maybe hundreds of thousands. Timesplitters trilogy remastered with all the multi-player intact is a day one full price purchase for me.

@Poodlestargenerica That explains a lot…. So they think they know money, but they definitely don’t know how to manage anything. Got it.

Another group Embraced™.

They were really counting on that $2 billion from the Saudi PIF to keep funding their otherwise unsustainable buying spree.

Acquisition culture does it again.

@Skunkfish One reason they need to go join Retro Studio, both are dev that had experience with making fun 1st person shooting adventure on N64 so forming with Retro Studio would give Metroid Prime 4 that added talent to make the game the best it could be.

@Dm9982 Yeah the problem is margins. If I owned timesplitters, I could get funding to flip that and make a few million bucks easy cash. That's not enough for a hedge fund. They'd take it, but their purview is so vast that dealing with thing like managing a single intellectual property on a micro, or even macro level is not financially sound. There's a quote from a superman comic, I want to say it was all star by Grant Morrison, but it may have been something else, about how if lex luthor found a 100 dollar bill on the ground it literally wouldn't be worth his time to stop and pick it up. Shareholders don't want to see a company like free radical losing money even if it is for the purpose of making it.

TimeSplitters deserves WAY better than the way it's been (mis) handled over the past two decades. A real shame.

This is sad, obviously. The original Free Radical Design was formed from a bunch of Rareware devs that left before the move to Microsoft.

But looking at these group photos, I think many of these folks were in diapers when the last TimeSplitters game was released. I doubt that fans of those games would be pleased by whatever came out of this group. What has the studio done in the past 20 years?

For context, this incarnation of the studio was "Free Radical" in name only. As the article says, they reformed just 2 years ago.

The original Free Radical shut down 10 years ago and reformed as Dambuster. Dead Island 2 is their most recent release.

A sad day, even if the company was "Free Radical" in name only.

@Serpenterror

Only 3 ex-Rare devs were working at the new Free Radical. David Doak, Steve Ellis and Martin Wakeley. Doak and Ellis worked on Goldeneye and a bit on Perfect Dark, while Wakeley worked on Blast Corps, Jet Force Gemini and Mickey's Speedway USA back in their Rare days.

Doak's last game was Haze in 2008. Ellis and Wakeley worked also on Haze, as well as the multiplayer mode of Crysis 2. In 2011, Ellis and Wakeley founded a new company called"Crash Lab", which developed mobile games.

This sucks. Hopefully Embracer will have the decency to sell them the TimeSplitters IP for cheap is they were to open a new studio.

Imagine if the other Rare exes at Playtonic hired them and allowed them to make the spiritual successor to the spiritual successor to the spiritual successor to GoldenEye?

looking at their age i think none of them must be from the original Time Splitters team.

@Thomystic
They do not look like Rare veterans to be honest, they are far too young. My guess is that no one from the golden eye team is left at free radical. So why should they hire them?