A report concerning publisher Annapurna Interactive has hit the web this morning courtesy of Jason Schreier at Bloomberg, who says that the entire staff at the company have left - including president Nathan Gary.
The reason for the departures is apparently because Annapurna Interactive had been exploring plans to spin-off the company as a private entity, but were unable to reach an agreement with the Annapurna Pictures owner Megan Ellison. As a result, everyone at Interactive resigned, with 25 people said to have walked away in all.
Here's what Nathan Gary had to say in a statement to the outlet:
"All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned. This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly."
As you may well know, Annapurna Interactive has published a wide variety of popular Xbox titles in recent years including Stray, Twelve Minutes, Outer Wilds, What Remains of Edith Finch, Cocoon, Neon White and many others.
A spokesperson mentioned today that all existing games and projects will still remain under Annapurna following the news, and Remedy has also confirmed that nothing will be affected in terms of Alan Wake and Control as a result of it.
Remedy's communications director (Thomas Puha) had the following to say on social media:
"Many of you are reaching out about the news around Annapurna (sorry to see what is going on to all involved ) Interactive. Thank you for your care! Remedy's deal for Control 2, including Alan Wake and Control AV rights, is with Annapurna Pictures, and we are self-publishing Control 2. (I hope I made sense; its 5am in Finland and I'm jet lagged)."
What do you make of this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
Comments 8
I'd love to have seen the person who went to the offices that morning to discuss the deal... and found it locked and no-one had arrived.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a stray cat to find a home for.
Damn. They're my favourite publisher as they constantly put out great games with real creativity and none of the live service and Microtransaction BS. Now they're gone there's no publisher I actually "like" any more.
@PhileasFragg guess is too soon to say, but maybe with this kind of mass action they'll find a way for them to revive under another name. Just hoping, am also a fan of their work.
This is crazy! I love Annapurna, they're probably my favourite publisher.
@avoidercat I hope so, but a publisher needs a lot of cash, or at least access to a large amount of good credit to fund developers. You can't just take the people from one publisher and make another without that backing.
So let me try to understand this?
Game developers are laying people off, left and right. Tough to find a job in the field today. So people just walk out on a job?
I will say this with the caveat of we don’t know what happened, but this feels like a hostile takeover from the employee perspective. Especially if folks can afford to mass quit to halt the company functioning. I wonder what the owner has to say.
Either way I do hope that the games that are on docket to be published and any devs that work with them aren’t impacted.
That sounds like a ridiculous demand and choice to make because of it, especially with the monthly mass layoffs in the gaming industry. I wish them the best but don't wanna hear any 'woe is me' stories from the team.
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