The team that was behind one of the greatest first person shooter franchise Bioshock, has announced that they will be shutting down.
According to the official statement from Irrational Games head Kevin Levine, they will be closing down the said studio and will be focusing on a much smaller team.
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.
The studio was established 17 years ago and released other notable classics such as System Shock 2, Freedom Force and SWAT 4. It was then acquired by Take-Two Interactive and the studio was briefly renamed to 2K Boston/ 2K Australia.
Irrational Games were having financial issues especially during the development of Bioshock Infinite, which had frequent launch delays and despite selling more than 4 million copies of Bioshock Infinite along with the release of DLCs.
Kevin Levine stated that he will now be focusing more on ‘narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly re-playable’. It is still unknown if the Bioshock franchise will be handled by Take-Two or will be sold to a different publisher. The second part DLC of Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea will still be released next month.
To learn more on the announcement, you may check the post on Irrational Game’s official website