An early logo revealed for the game was a parody of the "Gears of War" logo, with a monkey head replacing the skull from the original. Free Radical also sent out an early teaser trailer depicting a monkey in Master Chief's combat armour from the "Halo" franchise. This led to expectation of "in-game potshots" at those games and other gaming franchises, a prediction confirmed by Yescombe:"In the past "Timesplitters" has been very satirical at the expense of movies, this time it will be satirical at the expense of video games."However, after going into administration, Free Radical was bought out by Crytek and rebranded as Crytek UK in February 2009. The "TimeSplitters" project was subsequently placed "on hold." In a later interview, co-creator Steve Ellis confirmed that:""TimeSplitters 4" was in the very early stages of development when Free Radical went into administration ... A small playable demo was shown to several publishers, but it didn't attract any publishing deals."The poor reception for Free Radical's previous game, "Haze", was cited as one of the main reasons for the lack of publisher interest, alongside the lack of marketability for "a game that is based around a diverse set of characters and environments."