One of the oldest game studios around, Zombie Studios, has finally come to an end.
Fortunately, the studio’s closure is not the result of financial hardship or something of that nature, but of its owners, Mark Long (pictured above) and Joanna Alexander, simply wanting to retire. An announcement on the official site reads:
It has been over twenty years since it all started. Zombie was formed in the same year that Forrest Gump was released, Sony’s PlayStation launched, and Justin Bieber was born […] Now it is time for us to part ways and close our doors.
The owners of Zombie Studios are retiring and wish to thank you, our fans for the years of support you have provided us. It has been awesome working with all the various technology over the years, both hardware and software, growing with the industry and our fans, and producing fun games and technology of our own. We also wish to thank our employees, both present and past. Your dedication and passion to gaming is what Zombie was all about.
Based in Seattle, Zombie was founded in 1994 by Alexander and Long, two employees of the Sarnoff Research Center. Over the course of its lengthy history, the studio worked across multiple platforms and genres, but were perhaps best known as the creators of the Spec Ops series as well as Blacklight: Tango Down. The latter’s sequel, subtitled Retribution, was released as a free-to-play title for the PC and PlayStation 4 to positive reception and boasts over a million registered players. The studio’s most recent title, a survival horror game called Daylight, was released last April to a much icier reception.
Fortunately, it seems that the remnants of Zombie Studios will live on in the form of brand new studio Builder Box, which is headed by Zombie’s former director of production Andy Kipling and technical director Russel Nelson. Builder Box also includes all the staff working on Blacklight Retribution, who will continue to maintain and update the game in the coming years.