Tiny Games developer Hide and Seek closing in new year

Game studio and creative agency Hide and Seek will close in the new year because the business is not longer financially sustainable, according to director Alex Fleetwood in an announcement on the company's website.

The studio has worked on projects like Tiny Games — an app with hundreds of real-world games, Sesame Street Family Play and Terra. It is best known for making experimental games, celebrating the medium in all its forms and hosting festivals and conferences about game culture.

Fleetwood wrote on the company website that the news that Hide and Seek is closing might come as a surprise to many people, but the studio has decided to close the company sooner than it absolutely has to is to give its employees the time to find new jobs.

The company has been supporting itself through commissions and, while it worked for a while, budgets began to shrink, and this had an impact on the studio.

"You don't have to be any kind of smart businessperson ... to figure out that if your salary bill's going up, and your income's going down, you're going to struggle," he wrote. "We also knew there was no white knight of public funding out there to help us out. While there is a rhetoric of governmental support for the creative industries, and for cultural organizations that innovate, our experience of funders has been one of diminishing returns."

The studio will be closing its doors in early 2014. All current projects will be completed in the coming weeks.