Ubisoft Leamington Has Officially Closed Its Doors, Ending Its 22-Year History

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Earlier this year, in January, Ubisoft announced as part of its staff that it would be closing Ubisoft Leamington, amidst a larger restructuring of its business, bringing an end to the UK studio's impressive 22-year run.

Over the last few days, the studio put out one final message on LinkedIn (and Twitter/X), thanking its "talented team, whose creativity, passion and dedication have left a lasting mark on the games" itt has created.

It also confirmed the studio had officially closed its doors, as of April 1st (h/t: GIBiz!).

https://twitter.com/x/status/1907375063168365015

Here's the statement in full:

"After many incredible years, we want to share the news that Ubisoft Leamington has officially closed its doors. We are beyond grateful to our talented team, whose creativity, passion and dedication have left a lasting mark on the games we’ve created, the memories we’ve shared and the community we’ve built in Leamington.

As part of this transition, we’ll be merging our account with Ubisoft Reflections, where you can continue to stay up to date with the latest news and developments from our UK team.

For those of you who are in and around Leamington, you’ll still see our remaining team around town, and at local industry events.

Thank you for being part of our journey, we truly appreciate your support."

Ubisoft Leamington was first established back in late 2002 as FreeStyleGames by a group of former Codemasters employees that included Alex Darby, David Osbourn, Jamie Jackson, and Phil Hindle, as well as the ex-Rare developers Alex Zoro and Jonny Ambrose. Its first game B-Boy was published by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2006 in Europe for the PS2 and PSP and was a competitive breakdancing game.

This was then followed by a couple of Buzz! Junior games, including the PS2 titles Buzz! Junior: Monster Rumble (otherwise known as Buzz! Junior: Monster Rally in North America) and Buzz! Junior: RoboJam.

In September 2008, Activision Publishing revealed it had acquired the studio, with the developer announcing around the same time that it was working on downloadable content for the Guitar Hero series and a new music game. This new music game ended up being 2009's DJ Hero, a spin-off from the Guitar Hero series that memorably came packaged alongside a turntable controller.

DJ Hero would go on to receive strong reviews from the press at the time, including publications like Game Informer, Eurogamer, and IGN, and would be the game to truly put FreeStyleGames on the map. Initially considered a commercial flop, it eventually went on to have an impressive "long tail", and received a sequel DJ Hero 2, in 2010.

Under Activision, the company eventually fell into the role of a support studio on many of the company's games, including titles in the Skylanders and Call of Duty series, before resurfacing with a reboot of the Guitar Hero series — Guitar Hero Live — in 2015.

Then, in 2017, it was acquired again — this time by Ubisoft — undergoing a name change to Ubisoft Leamington. Since then, it has worked on a bunch of Ubisoft releases, including Starlink: Battle for Atlas, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, and most recently Assassin's Creed Shadows.