Today the gaming community received some terrible news which will hopefully turn into something good in the end. Ken Levine announced that Irrational Games, the studio that brought us BioShock, SWAT and Freedom Force, will be ‘winding down’ and ultimately shut its doors which means 90 percent of the staff will loose their jobs.
I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it. I’ll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two. That is going to mean parting ways with all but about fifteen members of the Irrational team. There’s no great way to lay people off, and our first concern is to make sure that the people who are leaving have as much support as we can give them during this transition.
Levine will build a smaller studio at Take-Two to focus on repayable and narrative driven games with a much smaller team than the massive studio that was Irrational in Boston.
In time we will announce a new endeavor with a new goal: To make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable. To foster the most direct relationship with our fans possible, we will focus exclusively on content delivered digitally.
Of course we are sad that the studio is shutting down and many employees are loosing their jobs but we hope that Levin’s passion project will become something we will love in the end and that those who will be without jobs, will soon find a new one.
Stay tuned.
