Sega Shuts Down Rovio Copenhagen After Cancelling Sonic Blitz
Sega is closing Rovio's Copenhagen studio and cancelling its mobile game Sonic Blitz, ending a project that never made it past a limited test launch. Around 20 employees worked on the game at the Danish studio, which will cease all operations in Denmark following a redundancy process. (VGC)
Sonic Blitz was a hybrid: part endless-runner, part card-collecting game. Players raced through stages gathering rings — the golden currency Sonic games are known for — before switching into team-based tactical battles. It soft-launched in Brazil and the Philippines in June 2025, a "soft launch" being a limited release publishers use to test a game with real players before a full rollout.
By February 2026, Rovio pulled even that test version from app stores so the team could keep working on it. The game was cancelled outright sometime after, and as of 24 August 2026 it became fully unplayable for anyone who still had it downloaded.
The stated reason was player retention — whether people came back to the game after their first session. Sega West COO and Rovio CEO Alex Pelletier-Normand said Sonic Blitz had a strong selling point, but that appeal was not translating into sustained engagement. Retention numbers, in other words, were not good enough.
Rovio told affected staff that those who cannot be moved to another project within the company will receive a transition package including outplacement services and wellbeing support.
The closure lands against a difficult backdrop for Rovio's parent company. Sega acquired Rovio in August 2023 for €706 million, buying the studio best known for the Angry Birds franchise to strengthen its mobile business. By November 2025, Sega said Rovio's existing titles had been on a continuous downward trend since the acquisition. Then in February 2026, Sega recognised roughly ¥31.3 billion (€169 million) in impairment losses — an accounting write-down meaning the company formally declared Rovio was worth €169 million less than what Sega paid for it.
That is a steep discount on a deal struck barely three years ago. Sonic Blitz would have been Rovio's first new franchise launch under Sega ownership, a fresh test of whether the studio could build something beyond Angry Birds. Its cancellation, and the loss of the Copenhagen studio that built it, narrows that path.
For the Sonic brand more broadly, mobile has been a mixed picture — licensing deals and free-to-play titles come and go, while the main console games continue to carry the franchise. Sonic Blitz will not be joining that roster. (VGC)
