Mobile publisher Zynga announced its intention to close the office of the NaturalMotion subsidiary in the English city of Oxford.
It is unknown how many employees will be affected by the liquidation of the Oxford branch. It employs about 50 people.
Zynga informed Pocket Gamer that after the closure it plans to distribute the vacant staff between branches in London and Brighton.
The closure of the Oxford office is due to Zynga’s intention to stop the commercial use of gaming technologies created in NaturalMotion.
“We believe that we should focus on internal projects. This will help us better develop new games and support existing services,” Zynga said.
The company has developed the Morpheme animation toolkit and the Euphoria animation engine. They were used to create titles such as Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption, Quantum Break and others.
Zynga bought NaturalMotion in 2014 for $527 million.
In May of this year, the head and founder of the company Torsten Reil left NaturalMotion.
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