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Rumor: Sony Planning On Shutting Down Zipper Interactive

The writing could be on the wall for Socom and MAG developer, Zipper Interactive.

According to sources at Kotaku, the developer is being hit with layoffs and project cancellations and may even face studio shutdown. Zipper’s last game was the PSone Vita title Unit 13

We’ve reached out to Sony for confirmation, but the publisher declined to comment. 

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Comments
  • did anyone really play mag much
  • Not a big loss, the world moves on.

  • I love MAG so much. I really hope that a sequel can come out sometime for it. It's a shame that zipper sorta gave up on MAG after a while...

  • I will say Unit 13 was Zipper's best effort since SOCOM: Combined Arms on the PS2. M.A.G. was a joke of a game, and SOCOM:4 was lackluster and really gained no audience due to the PSN outage last year. Shame to see it happen, but writing has been on the wall.
  • Sad news, I'll always have respect for Zipper, most of my best gaming memories are from playing the Socom games on PS2. Too bad the series didn't transition into this generation very well.

  • Sad to hear; playing Socom on PS2 is what really got me into playing war titles. I personally loved Socom 4, no it wasn't as great as it's predecessors but it was still a pretty solid game and I'm having too much fun with Unit 13 right now. If these rumors are true I wish everyone at Zipper the best of luck for the future.

  • This is definitely sad news, I hope the best for Zipper Interactive no matter what happens.

  • That's sad news. Especially since I've been waiting to a MAG followup

  • this sucks to hear. but honestly what did anyone expect they havent mad a decent game since socom 1 and even that game probably got a pass because of its voice integration and it was one of the first online ps2 games

  • Sucks for the developers not having jobs but their games themselves weren't that great.

    hope they can find other jobs with other developers, i hear kojima is looking for people to work on mgs5, they should apply for that.

  • They always arrived too late.

  • seems to that Sony game division is shutting down all together one by one.

  • Wow, I guess I'm a little shocked. This maybe a dumb question, but does this mean their online servers goes down with them? Such as Socom 4 and Mag? I really enjoy playing Socom 4, and I want to find time to play MAG still.

  • Too bad those three games mentioned above sucked

  • Does not suprise me, in a time when buggets are very tight and anything below a 7 in the metric score for a game means layoffs project cancelations and even shut downs this studio had it coming. Socom has been in the decline over the years, mag was a attempt (a poor one might i add)to take a slice out of the battlefield market fail miserably. Unit 13 was probably their last chance to show they where worth the effort but didn't make the cut, feel bad for them

  • I've been enjoying Unit 13, but it's sad if they are actually being shut down. Hopefully the staff can find work quickly if that's the case.

  • I have mixed feelings about this.

    I loved SOCOM 1-3, and I thought MAG was a pretty neat concept.

    But like others have said, well...they just aren't relevant anymore.

  • PSone Vita, huh, not familiar with that console. Not a huge loss, Do we really need any more war games?

  • People forget that Sony has many studios under its belt, so the developers could be farmed out to one of their other branches. I think they're just shutting down their smaller (read:struggling) studios, and if the IP is good enough then one of the remaining studios will pick it up and keep the IP alive.

  • Can't say I'll miss 'em. The world needs far less military shooter developers. I know I'm a Dick for saying it, but it's true.

    Hopefully everyone there lands on their feet, gets new jobs at different studios, and gets to work making things a tad more memorable, fun, and colorful than "Generic Military Shooter 2010" (MAG) and "Generic Military Shooter 2012" (Unit 12 or 13 or whatever)

    :)

    Oh and Gameinformer, you said, "PSOne Vita" up there. Which is all sorts of wrong and confusing ;)