Marcus Lehto, co-creator of Halo, parted ways with EA after the Ridgeline Games studio was closed by EA and decided to take a break from the industry.
One of the creative minds behind the Halo series Marcus Lehto‘s work on the Ridgeline Games studio, which was closed by EA, has ended. Lehto served as senior creator of the Halo games at Bungie until 2012, when he went independent and founded V1 Interactive studio for the shooter game Disintegration. Lehto, who joined EA in 2021, founded Seattle-based Ridgeline Games to develop a deeper story-oriented Battlefield game.
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Ridgeline Games has become one of the latest victims of widespread layoffs in the tech and gaming industry. EA announced in late February that the studio was closing and its entire staff was being laid off. Lehto announced that he left the company after these developments and said, “It broke my heart to see EA lay off my team.”
“I don’t talk much here because I don’t have anything positive to say about my last departure,” Lehto said, expressing negative feelings about his recent experience with EA. He stated that the layoffs have hurt many people in the industry, and expressed on LinkedIn that the “lives of the talented people working at Ridgeline Games have been unnecessarily disrupted” and that he is “incredibly saddened and deeply saddened” by this situation.
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The closure of Ridgeline Games has left the fate of the single-player Battlefield scenario project in the works uncertain. The fact that Lehto said about this project that it will “attract the attention of players in new ways” shows the potential of the project, but its future is a mystery for now. Lehto stated that he will step away from the gaming industry for a while and evaluate whether he will consider returning.