Raccoon Logic hasn’t been very subtle, but they’ve taken a swipe at Phil Harrison… but what’s the story between the studio and Harrison?

The Revenge of the Savage Planet ad that was seen at this year’s Game Developers Conference seems to be poking fun at former Stadia boss Phil Harrison. The ad, which is currently on display in San Francisco’s Union Square, features a bald-headed character with what appears to be a large brain. It reads, “Has a Harrison fired you lately? You may qualify for emotional support.” The ad also includes a link to the Revenge of the Savage Planet website. The character in the ad is named Gunther Harrison, the CEO of Alta Interglobal, but anyone familiar with the Savage Planet story so far will recognize him as Phil Harrison.

Harrison joined Google in 2018, leading the division that was ultimately responsible for the Stadia cloud platform. In December 2019, Google acquired Typhoon Studios, the development team behind Journey to the Savage Planet. The Montreal-based studio became part of the Stadia Games and Entertainment studio (the only such acquisition by Google…), and it happened a month before the release of Journey to the Savage Planet. Typhoon then started working on a sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet, but Stadia was not successful, and in 2021 Google closed all of Stadia’s game development teams. According to Harrison, the move was the best way to build Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that would help the industry grow…

The core members of Typhoon then founded a new studio in Montréal. This became Raccoon Logic, which received a large initial investment from China’s Tencent. It was also able to keep the Journey to the Savage Planet IP going, and last August at Gamescom it officially announced the game’s sequel, the upcoming Revenge of the Savage Planet, in which corporate greed and stupidity will play a major aspect of the story. It also sounds a bit like a criticism of Google Stada from the developers, and this is backed up by the advertisement, which can be seen below. The ad also features a QR code that, when scanned, takes you to a website that keeps track of how many people have read it. For every user who scans the code, Racoon Logic will donate money to the Canadian Mental Health Association…

Revenge of the Savage Planet will be released on May 8th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It will also be available on Xbox Game Pass on day one.

Source: VGC