Black Rock now officially closed
Split/Second developer shuts its doors for the last time
Black Rock Studios officially closed its doors today, Eurogamer reports
Disney's intention to close Black Rock was announced earlier this year, but former studio director Nick Baynes confirmed this as the company's final day via his Twitter account.
"@blackrockster officially closes its doors today," he wrote. "Thoughts go out to all facing their last day. A bright future awaits all though I'm sure!"
Signs of trouble at the studio started in May, when rumours of as many as 100 redundancies began to surface.
"It seems Disney have been unable to provide us with a project to work on, and our concept pitches clearly haven't gone down well (despite there being many of them)," a source told Eurogamer at the time.
Disney confirmed that the studio would close the following month. Black Rock's last project was due to be an RTS in the vein of League Of Legends, based in an alternative world and starring a god called Loki.
"The idea was that you had to do PVP and PVE to gain XP to somehow escape," the source said. "The game was intended to be released quite quickly, in beta anyway, in about six months or so."
At least two studios have been started by former Black Rock employees: ShortRound Games, which is focusing on iPad development, and Roundcube Entertainment, which is led by former studio head Nick Baynes.