"I want to be clear, our first choice was to try and keep this group together and find a buyer for the studio," said Coddy Johnson, Activision Worldwide Studios' chief operating officer. "This decision comes after a few months of exhausted examination and a number of different options across the board." Johnson says the company is offering displaced employees "counseling, external placement services and external career fairs."

The studio was offered for sale in November after disappointing sales of Blur. At the time, an anonymous source claimed that multiple companies were interested in purchasing Bizarre. Johnson now says that they've "explored a lot of leads," but has "not been able to find any interested parties."