Rovio announces closure of London branch

Rovio has announced the closure of its London studio, in addition to the redundancy of all seven of the employees based there.

Studio head Mark Sorrell announced the decision to close Rovio London on Twitter.

It’s with a heavy heart that I tell you the @rovio London Studio is going to close. Sad times for us, but I look back with genuine pride at my time with these talented and kind people. Been quite a ride. pic.twitter.com/EYxO3ZZmaA

— Mark Sorrell 💅 (@Sorrell) March 2, 2018

The studio was opened with an announcement at Pocket Gamer Connects London in January 2017. In their fiscal report looking back at 2017, Rovio stated that it had: "decided on a plan that would see its game studio in London closed and the functions of the games business centralized in Espoo and Stockholm. Should the plan be implemented, the operations of the London studio will be discontinued by the end of March and the employment of the seven people working at the London studio will be terminated."

"Rovio plans to utilize the work done at the London studio in the MMO game genre at the Battle studio in Espoo, particularly in real-time player vs. player and team vs. team games (such as Battle Bay)."

Rovio went public in September 2017, and stock in the Finnish company tumbled at the end of February when the company issued a profit warning stating that revenues are expected to be between €260m and €300m in 2018. Despite pre-interest and tax profits of nine to 11 per cent, this was below analysts predictions.