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"404 Company Not Found :-(", says their website.
Last month, there were lots of rumors that Free Radical Design, the studio behind TimeSplitters, was closing its doors and preparing to disband its staff in December. Well, it turned out that the rumors and all the speculation were true, and Embracer Group did shut down the studio it had acquired in 2021.
Now, if you want to visit Free Radical Design's website, you won't find anything there, just sad "404 Company Not Found :-(".
Imag credit: Free Radical Design
The former employees took to Twitter and LinkedIn to confirm the closure of the studio, expressing their grief and bidding farewell to the TimeSplitters developer.
"As the sun sets on my last day at Free Radical Design, I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to collaborate both with industry legends and with emerging talents who will no doubt shape the future of the industry," wrote Kevin Ellis, the Quality Assurance Manager at Free Radical Design. "Free Radical Design was a hub of creativity, but sadly, we join an ever-growing list of casualties in a broken industry where entire studios are treated as replaceable cogs in a soulless machine fixated on nothing but share prices."
Here's another message left by Free Radical Design's Environment Artist.
"It was an honor to be a part of Free Radical Design and work on new Timesplitters. I really fell in love with the IP and if I could work with any of these people (not just artists) again it would be amazing. Think we can all be proud of what we achieved and certainly didn't go down without a fight. It's been a blast," wrote Will Brown, a Junior Environment Artist at Free Radical Design.
With Free Radical Design closing, many employees join the 900+ people laid off by Embracer Group since June 2023. The studio's closure also means the end of the new TimeSplitters project, leaving fans hoping and waiting for a new game in the series that may never be released.
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