Toys for Bob, the developer behind Crash Bandicoot and Skylanders has announced that it is breaking away from Activision to become independent. Toys for Bob, based in California, was acquired by Activision in 2005.
Since its acquisition, Toys for Bob has worked on myriads of Crash Bandicoot, Skylanders, Call of Duty, and Spyro games. In a statement released on Thursday, February 29, 2024, the studio heads Avery Lodato and Paul Yan announced that they were exploring a solo path.
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“Over the years, we’ve inspired love, joy, and laughter for the inner child in all gamers,” read the statement published by the company. “We pioneered new IP and hardware technologies in Skylanders. We raised the bar for best-in-class remasters in Spyro Reignited Trilogy. We’ve taken Crash Bandicoot to innovative, critically acclaimed new heights.”
“With the same enthusiasm and passion, we believe that now is the time to take the studio and our future games to the next level. This opportunity allows us to return to our roots of being a small and nimble studio.”
While Toys for Bob stated what going independent would mean for them, Yan and Lodato also said they would explore “a possible partnership” with Microsoft.
“While we’re in the early days of developing our next new game and away from making any announcements, our team is excited to develop new stories, new characters, and new gameplay experiences,” the duo added. “Our friends at Activision and Microsoft have been extremely supportive of our new direction and we’re confident that we will continue to work closely together as part of our future.”
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The latest game released by Toys for Bob and published by Activision was Crash Team Rumble. The June 2023 release was an online multiplayer and the third in the party genre of the Crash Bandicoot series. It featured various members of the franchise as playable characters.
The game had a mixed reception. On Metacritic, it raked in an average of 71 points on Xbox Series X and the score dropped to 67 on PS5. The game was criticized for being repetitive and for matching players of unequal levels.
Toys for Bob will stop updating Crash Team Rumble with new content after next week
There was always bound to be ripple effects when Toys for Bob announced they were breaking away from Activision. The first immediate impact of that decision was the announcement that Crash Team Rumble will not get further content updates after next week.
The upcoming content update will be the last and will include content from all previous seasons. Players were greeted with the message when they launched the game. However, Crash Team Rumble will not be immediately pulled offline.
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“March 4, 2024, will be the final content update for Crash Team Rumble,” read the statement. “The core game will still be live and players will have access to a free 500-tier battle pass that includes 104 new items. This will include all of the Battlepass content from Seasons 1 through 3, plus all the available event rewards.”
“Additionally, Crash Coin purchases will be turned off, and players can use their existing Crash Coins to purchase tier skips for the Battlepass.”
Since its launch Crash Team Rumble has failed to take off. According to Twitch Tracker, the game hit a peak concurrent player count of 12,174 on June 23, 2023. At its peak, it had only 94 channels concurrently playing the game. In the last 7 days at the time of writing, only 1 channel was playing the game.
Perhaps, its poor performance may be the reason why Toys for Bob has decided that it was unwise to keep pouring resources into the game in the form of new season content.
