Developer Jeff Strain has founded two major gaming companies in the last 20 years. ArenaNet (Guild Wars) and Undead Labs (State of Decay). Previously, he worked at Blizzard on major gaming classics. But now it’s all over and his trust in his new company has been shaken. And all of this after a single phone call.
How do you know Jeff Strain?
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What was his new plan? Strain had now founded a third studio: Possibility Space. They were working on a game here, but hadn’t yet revealed what kind of game it would be. Only the project name “Vonnegut” was known.
“Today is your last day as an employee of our studio”
This is how it turned out: The employees received an email that they were laid off and the studio was dissolving. Strain himself wants to retire from the gaming industry and take care of his wife, who is ill.
Why does he do this? In an email to employees, which was available to a Polygon journalist, Strain writes (via Twitter): He received a call from journalist Ethan Gach from the US site Kotaku. He is currently writing about his company and the closure of Crop Circle Games, a video game company that Strain ran together with his wife, who is now ill.
In the conversation, the journalist mentioned some business details that are top secret. The journalist said he received them from current employees.
Employees apparently revealed company secrets to the press
Strain says: That’s frightening. He immediately met with the company’s publishing partner and disclosed the breach of trust. The partner had lost confidence in putting more money into the company. It was therefore agreed to cancel the “Vonnegut” project.
Without the project he would close the studio. Today is the last day for all employees.
What kind of information is this? You don’t know that. The article Gach is writing is not yet online.
What else do you know? Even the closure of the studio he ran with his wife was strange. Here the woman said that she feared that the article by the Kotaku author would publish details about her health.
But he denied on Linkedin that he was planning anything like that.
Gach commented on the news on Twitter and expressed regret that more video game developers have lost their jobs. He does not comment on his own role:
The Cricle Crop Games studio was officially closed because they didn’t see a good financial chance for the projects. But this was contradicted by other people in the studio.
The last time we reported on Strain was about State of Decay 2:
State of Decay 2 won’t be a zombie MMO because the fans don’t want it