SHOUT OUT - Toys for Bob and Saber Interactive going independent is a welcome reprieve from bad news
More power to them!
By Jonathan Garrett
03/03/24
NOTE: thatHITBOX Shout Out’s are not sponsored content. They’re games, developers, individuals, or issues that we want to highlight and share purely out of interest.
It has been a miserable and turbulent time for hard working games industry devs in what feels like a relentless torrent of layoffs and closures. Thankfully, Toys for Bob, the incredibly talented folks behind Crash Bandicoot, have broken free from being a Call of Duty support studio and are going indie. In an equally jolly but still quite bizarre twist, they are already exploring a renewed second party partnership with Xbox for an unannounced project. Who or what do I have to sacrifice to make that a Banjo sequel?
Meanwhile, Saber Interactive are breaking free of that dreadful embrace[r group] in a $500 million deal that could see Gearbox following close behind. The Embracer cancellations and firings are particularly egregious given how aggressively they purchased studios and IP, only for them to have their funding fall flat and be forced to cull the very things that sought to develop.
Times being this tough make conversations around acquisitions seem a bit misplaced; i’m sure Sony had considered picking up Arrowhead after the runaway success of Helldivers 2, but since they too have just recently chopped 900 devs from across their studio portfolio, it’s clear that no-one is safe and we’re a long way from true stability.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
