Evolution Studios Shut Down by Sony

Evolution Studios, the developer behind Driveclub and Motorstorm, was recently shut down by Sony, as Gamesindustry.biz reports.

Sony elaborates:

Regular reviews take place throughout SCE Worldwide Studios, ensuring that the resources that we have in such a competitive landscape can create and produce high quality, innovative and commercially viable projects.

It is regrettable that this decision will lead to compulsory redundancies. We accept that this decision will mean that we risk losing high calibre staff but by focusing on other Studios that already have exciting new projects in development we believe we will be in a stronger position going forward and able to offer the best possible content of the highest quality for our consumers.

Evolution has been an important part of SCE Worldwide Studios for over 10 years - working on ground-breaking racing titles like WRC, Motorstorm and DRIVECLUB.This decision should not take anything away from the great work that Evolution has produced.

Wow. This comes out of nowhere, especially since Evolution Studios was still actively working on their latest game, Driveclub, even going so far as to talk about starting a new VR update for the game which was demo’d at last week’s GDC. While it seems unlikely that Motorstorm didn’t know about this ahead of time, it seems unlikely that they would have acted like nothing was wrong--especially if it meant dashing the hopes of players.

Still, that’s about 50-60 people out of a job, just like that. It can’t be easy to find yourself in that situation and we wish the best for those affected. There’s a lot of history at Evolution, and it’s sad to see that all go away. Fare thee well…