Black Rock Studio was a
video game developer based in
Brighton,
England. The studio was founded by Tony Beckwith in 1998 as Pixel Planet. It was then acquired by the
Climax Group in 1999 and was renamed Climax Brighton. In 2004, it became Climax Racing, as the Climax Group rebranded its studios. On 28 September 2006, it was acquired by
Buena Vista Games and was eventually renamed Black Rock Studio in 2007. The last game the studio developed for the Climax Group was
MotoGP '07, which was completed after its acquisition by Buena Vista Games. The name is derived from a
district in Brighton. In early 2011, the company faced lay-offs and was forced to abandon sequels for
Pure and
Split/Second. Despite good reviews for both games,
Disney Interactive Studios turned down both sequels to focus on
freemium content.