State of Decay Producer's Studio Closes for an Unusual Reason!

General news News 04/13/2024

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Jeff Strain (co-founder of ArenaNet, the company that created Guild Wars, and Undead Labs, the company behind State of Decay) has had a decent career, but somehow nothing seems to be working out for him lately.

Nicole Carpenter, writing for Polygon, got her hands on an internal email that Kotaku wanted to write about Prytania Media. This company was founded by Strain and his wife. One of the studios under the company, Crop Circle Games, was recently shut down, but now it’s another team, Possibility Space. Kotaku’s editor has more information about the AAA project being developed under the codename Project Vonnegut. Someone inside the studio leaked it…

Strain told its publishing partner about it, and they expressed that they had little confidence, so they should not expect any further funding for the game’s development due to the leaks. So Project Vonnegut is dead, and Possibility Space has no chance for a second chance because it has been shut down. This may be the first time that a project has been cancelled due to a leak. There were originally four studios under Pyrtania Media, and the second one just closed, so the company’s track record is not very good.

Who could the unknown publishing partner be? In 2021, Jez Corden said that Xbox was funding Project Vonnegut, and since Microsoft often uses this naming scheme (and they already worked with Strain on State of Decay), it seems logical that it could be an Xbox-exclusive title. As Microsoft has made more than a few cutbacks in its video game division (while the Xbox franchise is underperforming), it seems that the company is starting to rely on external partners to bring third-party projects under the Xbox banner… while they bought Bethesda and Activision Blizzard for that.

In the internal email, Strain said that he is leaving the gaming industry, so it’s likely that the other two Prytana Media studios are gone as well…

Source: WCCFTech

In a bizarre studio closure and layoff message to staff, Possibility Space owner Jeff Strain blamed the studio closure on employees leaking information to the press. pic.twitter.com/d4OHrm3z2N

— Nicole Carpenter (@sweetpotatoes) April 12, 2024

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Angyal Anikó

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