Blue Tongue, the studio behind de Blob and de Blob 2, has been shut down by parent company THQ.

While de Blob didn't exactly set the sales charts on fire it was well received by critics and THQ seemed to have enough faith to give a sequel, which was released earlier this year on the Wii, DS, Xbox 360 and PS3. However, it seems that sales simply weren't good enough as THQ has closed the Australian studio behind the games.

Gamasutra report that THQ closed Blue Tongue alongside another of their Australian studios, THQ Studio Australia. Both THQ Studio Australia and Blue Tongue had worked on a number of franchises such as SpongeBob SquarePants, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius and Marvel Super Hero Squad.

Having closed these two studios THQ has also let go of 200 staff members but it is unclear if any employees have been kept on. de Blob started off as a student project and was released as a free PC game a number of years ago before being made into a Wii game. In the games industry many small studios come and go but quite often employees form new studios so while Blue Tongue may be gone hopefully the staff behind de Blob will be back in some form or another soon to once again provide us with unique new titles.