Ultimatum Games is shutting down

UK studio Ultimatum Games has shut down. 

“There will be no media obituary, just this sad, solitary tweet: We are shutting down Ultimatum UK,” announced founder and MD, Shahid Ahmad, on Twitter (thanks, GI.biz). “It lasted just over four years. We tried, we tried everything, but I wasn’t good enough, that’s what it boils down to.”

There will be no media obituary, just this sad, solitary tweet: We are shutting down @UltimatumUK. It lasted just over four years. We tried, we tried everything, but I wasn’t good enough, that’s what it boils down to.

— Shahid Kamal Ahmad (@shahidkamal) February 19, 2020

“A sad day but there were many good points,” added Kieran D’Archambaud. “We made a lot of clients happy. We did awesome work. Most importantly we learnt lessons so that next time will be bigger and stronger. My two years involvement were an absolute pleasure and I can’t wait until we work together again.”

The Twitter account of the company itself – which has worked with clients such as Creative Assembly, Sega, and Smilegate – has not been updated since November 2019.

Admah left his post as head of Sony’s strategic content division to found Ultimatum in 2015.

These latest layoffs sadly come on the back of several other closures and cutbacks we’ve seen across studios in recent months, most recently HQ Trivia, PlayStation’s Manchester Studio, Fantasy Flight Interactive, Gameloft, Amazon Game Studios and PayDay developer, Starbreeze. Sony’s Manchester studio, which focused on titles for PlayStation’s virtual reality system, also recently shuttered. It took in many of the staff affected by the closure of Driveclub developer Evolution back in 2016. 

Other recent layoffs and closures include Iron Tiger Studios, ArenaNet, Next Games, Forgotten Key, Define Human Studios, Bandai Namco Vancouver, and Trion Worlds. Telltale Games also laid off its staff in a studio closure back in September 2018.