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As the video games industry violently contracts to ensure shareholder satisfaction at the cost of making thousands upon thousands of people unemployed, Skylanders studio Toys For Bob have announced they’re splitting from Activision Blizzard and Microsoft to go independent. Good for them, but maybe too late for some. Earlier this month,the San Francisco Chroniclereported that it seemed Activision Blizzard were closing Toys For Bob’s California headquarters and laying off 86 people. Still, the new independent Toys For Bob say they’re working on something new and “exploring a possible partnership” with Microsoft.
Toys For Bob studio heads Paul Yan and Avery Lodato said inyesterday’s blog postthey “believe that now is the time to take the studio and our future games to the next level,” adding that it “allows us to return to our roots of being a small and nimble studio.” Toys For Bob haven’t said anything about the reported layoffs, so exactly how “small” they currently are is a bit of a mystery.
Yan and Lodato say Toys For Bob are “in the early days of developing our next new game and a ways away from making any announcements,” but are “excited to develop new stories, new characters, and new gameplay experiences.” I would find it very, very funny if they decide actually yes CoD is their passion, and they want to make a Warzone-esque battle royale FPS.
As forStar Control, Reiche and Ford left Toys For Bob in 2020 to make a new one, kinda. Their studio, Pistol Shrimp areworking on Ur-Quan Masters 2, a sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters, which is itself kinda already Star Control 2, only with the name untangled from a messy legal battle with Stardock that was only settledwith help from bees. For now, they recently releasedFree Stars: The Ur-Quan Masterscompletely freeon Steam.
