Rovio has closed its Copenhagen studio after cancelling its cellular title Sonic Blitz.
A spokesperson told Mobilegamer.biz that, because the redundancy course of is ongoing, they can not verify the precise variety of employees affected. Nonetheless, roughly 20 workers have been engaged on Sonic Blitz.
“The choice to discontinue our operations in Copenhagen has been extraordinarily tough,” the spokesperson mentioned. “We totally recognise the influence this has on our crew, particularly given the continuing challenges inside the broader video games business.”
“For crew members who we can’t allocate to a brand new undertaking inside Rovio, we’ll present a complete transition bundle, together with devoted outplacement providers and wellbeing help to help them in securing their subsequent profession alternatives.”
Rovio CEO and Sega West COO Alexandre Pelletier-Normand mentioned that it “want[ed] to pay attention our bets each by way of the video games that we’re making and the place we’re making them.”
“When [Sonic Blitz] was launched into the model, we felt that this was an ideal addition and one that would please the Sonic fandom,” he mentioned.
“That was the speculation. And in cellular, it appears nice on paper, and you then simply have to validate it, and plainly retention hasn’t been actually good for us, which is without doubt one of the first steps. We have to see folks have interaction with the sport for an extended time frame.”
Pelletier-Normand continued: “I nonetheless am satisfied that there’s a approach to attain extra gamers on cellular with Sonic, it seems that it is rather more sophisticated than I feel each Sega and Rovio thought. We’re nonetheless very pleased with the sport, very pleased with what the crew achieved, however it didn’t work.”
Sonic Blitz soft launched in 2025 in the Philippines and Brazil, however was shut down last month. Rovio said that this resolution was a part of a “broader change” on the studio.
“We need to be clear that this resolution shouldn’t be a mirrored image of the eagerness, creativity or effort that went into making Sonic Blitz, nor the wonderful help we obtained from our neighborhood all through the event of the sport,” the developer mentioned.
Sega acquired Rovio for $776 million in 2023. Earlier this 12 months, Sega reported a $200 million impairment on the acquisition cost after profitability “fell beneath the preliminary forecast.”
Sega reported challenges integrating Rovio’s Beacon know-how with its personal cellular titles.
“We discovered that the operational and advertising strategies and approaches considerably differ from Rovio titles and new cellular video games are but to totally exploit Beacon,” mentioned Sega CEO Haruki Satomi.
“Consequently, we’ve got sadly not achieved the extent of outcomes that had been anticipated previous to the acquisition.”