It’s a sad day for the PlayStation Generation… The Designers Republic, the design firm responsible for inventing the legendary, stylish look of the original WipEout game, unfortunately closed its doors earlier today.

A story which appeared on design magazine Creative Review’s blog confirmed the closure.

“We’d lost a couple of clients, didn’t win a couple of pitches, got a tax bill which should have been sorted out and wasn’t and a major client who didn’t pay the money they owed us”, explained company founder Ian Anderson, “in themselves any of those things would have been fine but when they come all at once there’s not much you can do.”

The studio’s staff of nine has unfortunately been made redundant. Anderson has vowed to be back though, and with the mark this company left on gaming culture and designers in general, we wish them the best in their future endeavours and can only hope they return to us soon.