After 23 years of making games, UK developer Blitz Games Studios today shut down. It's mostly worked on licensed games and ports, perhaps best known in recent years for helping with every version of Epic Mickey 2 except Wii U, Burger King advergame Sneak King, and, under its Volatile Games brand, Dead to Rights: Retribution and Reservoir Dogs. The company simply couldn't secure enough work or financing.

"We have done all that we can to make Blitz a success, and we have come frustratingly close in recent months," co-founder Philip Oliver said in the announcement.

"Major clients have felt unable to commit to investment in significant projects, others have changed strategy whilst appearing committed, and others have been slow to commit at all – all of these things have continued to hurt our finances. We have also sustained the business for some time with our personal savings but even those reserves have now been exhausted."

Blitz also owns indie game download store IndieCity, which has said "in all honesty we simply don't know" what will happen to it.

It's not all bad news, though. Two of Blitz's projects are "self-sustaining financially" so its forming a new company to continue working on them, which will save around 50 of the 175 jobs. As for the other 125 people, Sniper Elite dev Rebellion is working with Blitz to try to pick up as many as it can, and many other UK developers have pointed out their vacancies.