https://twitter.com/LimitedRunJosh/status/1750626884004594058
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I was hoping for the same thing 
I hope they kept the core of Toys for Bob so the studio can be ârebornâ with Spyro 4 and Crash 5.
Do we know if Beenox was affected?
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I have seen multiple reports that Beenox were also affected but no actual numbers.
It makes you wonder what happened to Toys for Bob anyway as they had close to 200 employees back in 2021. Now they are saying 35 employee layoffs equals 40% of their team. The numbers seem to be a bit off.
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Maybe because those studios werenât well managed, I feel for people who lost their jobs, but âthe night is darker before dawnâ, reorganisation was necessary, we canât complain about ABK organisation while criticizing the actions taken for correcting course imo. I always found strange the crazy growth within ABK during the antitrust saga and now regular people pay the price, as usual.
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Toys for Bob had to be shut down completely. Theyâve almost single-handely killed Crash. Itâs only still alive thanks to Beenox and Vicarious Visions. Even when Crash 4 and Crash Team Rumble were bombing hard, they ignored the complaints from fans and families, pushed them to do the grind, âgit gudâ, or move on. It was such a lousy case of mismanagement of a family IP that there was not a single chance they would ever work on a Crash game ever again.
I can tell you with almost certainty that all that is left at TFB is whatever they need to feed a couple of Crash Team Rumble seasons, and that you will never hear from them again after that.
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I donât think you can say ABK studios arenât well managed when theyâve created commercial and critical successes. I think itâs the wrong move to punish ABK studios when you can argue that Microsoft studios since Phil took over has been mismanaged . I feel Microsoft could use some of the leaders and talent . The right move wouldâve been to evaluate their studios while under Microsoft umbrella. Then make any moves you have to . Breaking up teams like this is shoeing Microsoft mismanagement
Toys for Bob did an incredible job on the Spyro remakes - not only bringing the games into the modern era but updating the visuals with a gorgeous new art design (one element I feel the Crash remakes maybe struggled a bit on) and Crash 4 was a spectacular return to form for a franchise that has been limping along since the PS1 era. I think they fumbled slightly with the excessive requirements to 100% (which highlights some difficulty issues that would have otherwise been okay) but nothing that couldnât be ironed out for a potential Crash 5. There is no studio out there I would trust more to continue the legacy of these two major franchises, and I say that as someone who has been playing these games since I was a kid in the PS1 era - and they would have been incredible at the core of family gaming at Xbox.
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What critical/commercial successes? Last Crash games underperformed badly (the recent gaas game is already on life support), Blizzard is a dumpster fire since years and years according to everyone and they could barely nurture their decades long IPs (someone remember Starcraft?), COD sells on its name only, not on its quality. XGS output since new gen has been excellent quality wise, the one and only disaster was Bethesda legacy.
I guess as usual public enragement becomes a selective memory erasament off all the AB woes we know since a decade.
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What I meant was it was odd that they have reduced in number to 80 employees before these layoffs. That type of range is usually considered a AA studio not AAA which they are/were let alone the 45 employees which they are now allegedly.
Iâm going to get a lot of hate, so with all due respect, I feel like we are giving many a picture of a saint as if thereâs no flaw whatsoever in order to hate more on a company. Iâm not going to justify any action, but donât think some werenât asking for it.
Those figures come from a youtuber if Iâm not mistaken, Iâd take them with a grain of salt.
Yeah as I said above I think they are quite off! 
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While itâs not good for people to lose jobs, thinking on it more we really have no idea how well ABK and their studios were set up before this
People were consistently saying before this acquisition that they werenât going to be able to keep things going the way they were in the long term and when it wenât off the rails it would go off hard, maybe this is a step in correcting it
I dunno, maybe Iâm completely wrong and itâs just the usual suits trying to save money but it was still a 70b purchase with 15-20k employees, I wasnât expecting such a drastic upheaval so soon but it was inevitable that there was going to be some kind of change
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Thatâs true (Spyro is 2018 game anyway, 6 years ago), but Crash 4 and last gaas (Team Rumble) commercilly bombed, no studio is shielded from two consecutive bombs unfortunately.
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Wheres the downvote button here?
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To be honest I forgot all about rumble, I suppose that confirms your point.
I do think given the layoffs that are occuring across the industry we would have seen the same from Activision sooner or later even if they were still independent. Not that it makes this better.
I was talking overall with ABK studios that were affected. For Toys for Bob theyâve released critical successes and I donât think gutting that team is the right move because they werenât mismanaged and were able to churn out good to great games.
Firstly letâs get Crash Team Rumble out of the way because it was an absolute disaster on every level:
(And arguably these awful scores paint a more positive picture of the game than reality because you wonât find a lobby without bots anymore despite Microsoft spending millions on advertising. )
As far as Crash 4 is concerned, Iâve beat the game twice, spent about 50 hours on the game (did it for my kids). Anyone whoâs seriously played through that game knows that there is something very wrong with it: itâs designed to kids but itâs harder than Dark Souls. There is a âcasual wayâ to roughly push 30 years old journos through the levels in like 7 hours, but then they see a tiny fraction of the game. You will never see a Crash 4 message board without finding fans being absolutely furious about the things that donât work in this game because of the limitations and lack of accuracy of the gameplay at that level of difficulty. Anyone whoâs tried to collect all the boxes in more than one level knows very well why theyâre shutting down Toys For Bob and is not surprised. They drove family away from the games, bombed commercially and have completely alienated the fanbase.
It was very easy to predict Microsoft would just put an end to Toys For Bob, sorry.