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After nearly a decade, Concrete Genie developer Pixelopus is no more. Sony has shut down the studio, as the team announced on Twitter.
Pixelopus posted a heartfelt goodbye on its social channels, thanking its millions of players as they supported the team in its endeavor to “make beautiful, imaginative games with heart.”
The San Mateo-based studio never officially announced what it was developing after Concrete Genie shipped in 2019. It was working with Sony Pictures Animation on a PlayStation 5 game, but it wasn’t ever clear what that was outside of a “new and exciting” adventure. Since Sony Pictures Animation was involved, some speculated that it was a Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse game, but that was never substantiated. Regardless, that project will likely never see the light of day, and it’s possible that it’ll stay a secret for the time being.
Sony has been on an acquisition spree over the last few years, but this is just one of the closures and changes seen in its first-party teams. Japan Studio was reorganized and re-centered around Team Asobi in 2021. Manchester Studio was shut down in 2020 without even releasing a game. Evolution Studios and Guerrilla Cambridge were also closed before that in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
Pixelopus only put out two titles in its nine-year existence. Entwined was its first official game, and was an atypical on-rails experience where players use the analog sticks to control a bird and a fish. Reviews were lukewarm for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation 4 title, and it currently sits at an average score of 62.
Concrete Genie, its second and final game, was received slightly more positively and settled at an average score of 77. It followed a young boy named Ash who uses a magic paintbrush to paint a dead town in order to liven it up. It also had a mode that supported PlayStation VR.