At first it was a rumor, then it was information, and now it’s a actuality. The just lately revived Free Radical seems to have closed down right now, one other loss in Embracer Group’s ongoing marketing campaign of shutdowns and layoffs.

Whereas the unique iteration of Free Radical filed for chapter in 2008, it was partially revived as Crytek UK and later Dambuster Studios. Nevertheless, in 2021, Embracer Group rounded up a lot of the important thing workers from the pre-bankruptcy days – together with Steve Ellis and David Doak – and re-established Free Radical to work on reviving the TimeSplitters sequence. Now, earlier than we even see any fruits from their labor, they’ve been shut down once more.

As of now, Free Radical’s former webpage exhibits a really specific 404 message. Fairly than a easy “Web page not discovered,” it as an alternative shows “404 Firm Not Discovered 🙁.” In the meantime, artists Mark Normington and Adam Kiraly have mentioned farewell to the corporate on Twitter.

The sheer quantity of layoffs this 12 months has made it tough to be enthusiastic concerning the business. For me, the lack of Free Radical hits fairly exhausting. I can nonetheless keep in mind the day a pal of mine launched me to TimeSplitters 2 on GameCube. We marveled on the stage of element and ate up the cooperative marketing campaign. Later, in faculty, my group of pals would collect round Timesplitters: Future Good to cook dinner up the strangest recreation modes. One specific hit was turning on one-hit kills and setting all of the weapons to bricks and bats.

Embracer Group selected to develop quickly in the course of the Coronavirus pandemic and is now shortly contracting because the business and the market as an entire appear to be contracting when it comes to funding. In consequence, Embracer Group has minimize greater than 900 jobs, with extra reportedly forthcoming. That is throughout a 12 months that has been exhaustingly rife with job losses.