Splash Damage places entire studio into consultation ahead of redundancies

Splash Damage has announced a consultation process that will affect all staff at its Bromley studio, which will result in significant redundancies. Employees were notified today and the news was released publicly via LinkedIn post.

The studio in Bromley was acquired by unnamed private investors in Septemberhowever, the company said it will continue to operate under existing management. It was previously owned by the Chinese conglomerate Tencent, which acquired the studio when acquired poultry company Leyou in 2020.Leyu bought the studio from founder Paul Wedgwood in 2016..

The studio previously laid off staff at the beginning of the year. after the cancellation of the online game Transformers: Reactivatewhich was revealed in 2022 but never shown publicly. In 2023, the company announced that it was working on open world survival game codenamed Project Astridin collaboration with streamers Christopher “Sacriel” Ball and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek.

The company's last game released was 2020's Outcasters, a multiplayer shooter made for Google's short-lived Stadia platform.

The news comes as another blow to game development in London following Square Enix's decision. recent cuts to its Western operations creating more than 100 jobs in areas under threat from Eidos. Sony closed its London studio in 2024.

Following Tencent's acquisition, CEO Richard Jolly said Gamesindustry.biz he was “most excited about where we were going.” But in 2024, both Tencent and rival Chinese firm NetEase abandoned their western expansionwhich triggered a series of sales and closures. Fellow member of UK-based Tencent-owned Sumo Group will cut 15% of staff in 2024 followed by further job losses in January this yearAnd Secret Mode publishing label sold in March.

Yun-yi Zhu, vice president and head of business operations, strategy and compliance at Tencent Games, told GamesIndustry.biz in August that the company has “no plans at the moment to exit” Western studios, but “you may see a reduction in investment in certain places, and I think some of that is just the realities of the industry and the dynamics of the industry.”

Splash Damage was founded in 2001 by a team that came together in the Quake modding scene, and rose to prominence with the release of the free-to-play multiplayer game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. She then created Enemy Territory: Quake Wars in 2007, Brink in 2011, and F2P released Dirty Bomb in 2014. The studio specialized in multiplayer shooters and mode design, and before the Tencent acquisition regularly collaborated with Microsoft on games such as Gears of War 5 and remasters of Gears of War and Halo. In 2020, it released the well-received Gears of War Tactics.