Earlier this year a workforce pruning left only 40 developers at the UK studio, of which two new studios sprung to life in their wake. Farewell Black Rock.
Racer Split/Second was the last project to be produced by the studio which had us race in ‘televised’ events where we could use specially built parts of the environment to take out the competition and earn ourselves ‘fans’.
”Disney Interactive Studios confirms that Black Rock Studios’ current project has not been greenlit for further development,” read a statement from Disney, ”consequently the company informed employees yesterday of the intent to enter a consultation process on the proposal to close the studios.” A source said Disney managed Black Rock ‘clumsily’.
Black Rock Studios began life as Pixel Planet, founded by Tony Beckwith in 1998. It was renamed Climax Brighton in 1999 after being acquired by the Climax Group. Another name change happened in 2004 to Climax Racing following a rebranding.
In 2006 Buena Vista Games acquired the studio and gave it the name Black Rock Studio in 2007. Their work included ATV, Hot Wheels, MotoGP, Pure and Split/Second.
