Adult Swim’s Big Pixel Studios – creator of Pocket Mortys – to shut down

News has broken, via Twitter, that UK studio Big Pixel Studios is set to close down as of the end of the year making all staff redundant. 

The studio is the creator of Pocket Mortys, the Rick and Morty-based mobile title where you collect and fight hundreds of Mortys from various dimensions. 

According to Laurie James, game server developer at the studio for the past two years, the studio will be laying off around 40 staff: “Some hella good people here, who made something proper cool. Unfortunately you’ll never get to play it, because capitalism.”

Big Pixel was only acquired by Adult Swim in May 2018, in order to allow Adult Swim to have greater control over its IP as it spread into other sectors. Adult Swim itself is part of the Warner media empire. 

Last year, MCV/DEVELOP spoke to Georgina Felce, studio operations manager, about the challenges of upscaling the studio from five staff to 35 staff over the course of a year. Sadly it now seems that all those staff will be looking for new jobs in the new year.