Developers at The Initiative, the Xbox studio tasked with rebooting Perfect Dark, are leaving the company at a rapid pace. Almost half of the employees abandoned ship and some of them even called the exodus “fast and furious”.
It is possible to verify that this large number of people have actually left their positions at The Initiative, but the reasons still appear as rumors and speculation. Talking to some of the devs who left the company, VGC folks cite discontent with the direction of the project and a general feeling that employees are not being heard in directing the game.
The most worrying part is that the number of employees leaving counts with some employees in senior and managerial positions. Daniel Neuburger was the director of Perfect Dark and came out last month, for example. The studio also lost system designers, animation, leveling, and world leaders. The lead gameplay engineer and animation lead also left The Initiative. And these are just a few examples, the complete list can be found on VGC, totaling almost 34 people leaving the company.
All this suggests that the staff of the Crystal Dynamicswho was brought in to help with the game, may have played a much greater role in the creation of the game than it appeared before.
The studio, meanwhile, remains confident that these departures won’t impact the game’s development too much, and even suggests that it’s normal for so many people to leave in the times we live in today. “It’s not uncommon to have personnel changes, especially during a time of global upheaval in the last couple of years.” – declared an Initiative spokesperson.
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