Just two and a half years after a new TimeSplitters game entered development, the studio behind the game, Free Radical Design, has confirmed it is officially shutting down.
Free Radical Design has been around since 1999. It is best known for its work on the cult-classic TimeSplitters trilogy. However, in 2008, the studio filed for bankruptcy after the PS3-exclusive first-person shooter Haze didn’t make much of a splash.
Then, in 2009, Free Radical Design was bought by Crytek. Still, by 2014, it was sold again, this time to Deep Silver, owned by the Embracer Group, who announced that in 2021, the studio would start working on a long-awaited new TimeSplitters game.
However, in the early hours of this morning, employees from Free Radical Design took to Twitter to confirm that Monday was their last day of work at the TimeSplitters development studio and that the studio is now officially closed.
The Free Radical Design closer means that many more employees are joining the over 900 that the Embracer Group has already laid off since June 2023. It also means that the new TimeSplitters project will likely never see the light of day – it’s a sad turn of events, no matter how you look at it.