Stephen Totilo reports that Toys for Bob might be closing as part of Microsoft/Activision layoffs

People losing their jobs obviously sucks. And that's a big part of this. But another, less important but still relevant, part of this is that all these studios that made smaller more interesting projects are being closed too. Toys for Bob has been a Call of Duty support studio recently (THANKS BOBBY!) but before that they made the Skylanders games and worked on the Crash and Spyro remakes and Crash 4. They're exactly the kind of studio that could have done a new Banjo-Kazooie or more Crash and Spyro or...anything. Those are also the kind of games that can help shore up Game Pass and give people options.

People losing their jobs is the most important thing, of course, but the industry is also losing a lot of structure and institutional knowledge about how to make games that aren't the same AAA live service type games or few prestige genres (like RPGs) remaining.

As someone who really likes 3-D platformers and very much enjoyed the Spyro remakes this is just more of the same and sucks.

Microsoft is continuing Activision's practice of destroying its entire legacy outside of COD and a few Blizzard properties.

Toys for Bob devs were teasing a new Spyro last year, MS gaslighting employees and fans during the ABK acquisition that older franchises could come back was a real kick in the teeth then.

@thepanzini: I'm pretty surprised that Microsoft hasn't begun putting out some of the older Activision stuff, like putting Singularity out on backwards compatibility or, if that's too difficult, at least put things like River Raid out.

Not even a whisper of any of that so far. Instead we get layoffs, an apparently terrible Call of Duty game, and...more layoffs.

I guess it's not surprising. It's still disappointing.

@bigsocrates: Yeah, after Bethesda went through they pretty much chucked everything out rightaway, the lack of classics is especially odd. I'm thinking whatever happens next week might be more than just a handful of ports to PS5 & Switch.

So, one of the original sources has issued a partial retraction. There were indeed layoffs, 86 according to the SF Chronicle article, but the physical office shuttering is part of a move towards all remote development that has been years in the making.

Also, Toys for Bob has issued a statement to members of the press that they are not shutting down but simply shutting down their offices to make way for a major transition towards work-at-home development:

I would still call a layoff of 80+ people significant enough to raise a Ship of Theseus question of, what's in a name if the people that made the games you like are gone.

yeah- wikipedia had them at 180ish employees as of 2021- so when you lose 86 folks (close to 1 in every 2) and then go 100% remote- that doesn't sound like they're particularly concerned with preserving culture or identity. reads more like 'resources' being 'reallocated,' but to be fair this is all armchair quarterbacking.

@zombiepie: Additionally, while they may not be technically shutting down, they're becoming an all remote studio half its size whose latest projects are all Call of Duty support projects. Does that sound like a studio gearing up to make new original games (or new remakes)?

It's better that not everybody lost their jobs, for sure, but the difference between shutting the studio down and redistributing the employees to other studios and this seems pretty minimal. Maybe Toys for Bob workers like their management structure or whatever and so would prefer this, in which case it's good, but it seems like the difference between this and what happened to Vicarious Visions is not big at all.

I would imagine most of the people who joined Toys for Bob did not do so hoping it would become a gutted Call of Duty support studio.