After a big boom of massive acquisitions in recent years, some gaming studios are starting to break away from mass corporations. Today, Toys For Bob, developers of the Skylanders series, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, and the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, announced in a blog post that they are “spinning away” from Activision and Microsoft and are becoming an independent studio.
Before any Crash and Spyro fans get their hopes up that this means new entries in those series, Activision still owns those IPs, so this move doesn’t mean anything for the orange bandicoot and purple dragon directly. That said, now Toys For Bob will have complete creative freedom to try new things. The blog post mentions that they are currently in the process of working out a deal for their first new game (which is very early in development) to be published by either Xbox, Bethesda, or Activision. With three large publishers under the same umbrella, it is hard to say who they would go with at this time, though obviously, they have a lot of familiarity with Activision.
Toys For Bob going indie follows the news that Embracer Group is close to selling Gearbox and that Saber Interactive has bought out their independence as well. Needless to say, the gaming industry is in a tumultuous spot following many high-profile acquisitions and mass layoffs.
A company like Toys For Bob breaking free from Microsoft and Activision means they no longer have to listen to a corporation that tells them to let go of many employees, like the 1,900 that Xbox laid off earlier this year. However, this also means that they don’t have the financial backing of those corporations as well. They are not starting from scratch because they have the pedigree with past successes, but this is by no means a move without risks in today’s gaming landscape.