Ubisoft acquires DJ Hero studio FreeStyle Games from Activision

The team behind Activision’s DJ Hero and Guitar Hero Live, FreeStyle Games, is now a Ubisoft studio. Ubisoft announced today that the company has acquired the studio and renamed it Ubisoft Leamington.

Ubisoft Leamington will “work in close collaboration with [Ubisoft] Reflections and Ubisoft’s other International studios to develop AAA games,” the company said on its blog.

FreeStyle Games was founded in 2002 and employed more than 100 people across three studios in Leamington Spa, London and Brighton. The developer was acquired by Activision in 2008 and developed the DJ Hero franchise, Guitar Hero Live and Sing Party for Wii U.

Last year, Activision announced it was restructuring FreeStyle Games and “considering a range of future options for the studio” in the wake of “lower than expected” sales of 2015’s Guitar Hero Live, an attempted reinvention of the once-hot rhythm game franchise.

Ubisoft’s Reflections studio, which developed the Driver series, has worked on Tom Clancy’s The Division, Grow Home and Watch Dogs. Additionally, Ubisoft announced today that Richard Blenkinsop has assumed the role of managing director at Reflections, taking over for Pauline Langourieux, who is now in a more “hands-on production position within the studio.”