Switch from work-for-hire to indie studio kills Two Tribes, but reboot on the cards

Dutch game studio Two Tribes has closed down after nearly 14 years, with the founders blaming their switch from work-for-hire to creating their own games. Two Tribes was formed in 2000 by Collin van Ginkel and Martijn Reuvers, and has produced games like the Toki Tori series, and the PC and Wii U versions of Mobigame's EDGE. The company was mainly a work-for-hire studio for the first ten years of its life, at which point the team decided to transition into an original IP development company. However, as explained in a blog post on the Two Tribes website, this transition didn't go as well as hoped. The company's latest game Toki Tori 2 took too long to build, and didn't sell as well as expected. Now the company has closed down and laid off its staff, although parent company Two Tribes Publishing is still in place, and still owns and publishes all of the games that the development studio put out over the years. However, it sounds like this isn't the end for Two Tribes, as original co-founders Martijn Reuvers and Collin van Ginkel have formed a new development studio out of the ashes which they say will also be called Two Tribes, and plan to start making games all over again. The big difference is that they plan to make much smaller and manageable games this time around, focusing first on a 2D side-scrolling shooter.