Irrational Games, the team behind the Bioshock series, is being wound up by its founding member, Ken Levine, with the loss of the majority of jobs there.
In a statement on the company's websie Levine explained his reasons saying that he wants to develop different types of games in future.
"Seventeen years is a long time to do any job, even the best one. And working with the incredible team at Irrational Games is indeed the best job I’ve ever had. While I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished together, my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before."
Bioshock Infinite launched in March of last year after a protracted and sometimes troubled development process. It went on to sell more than 4 million copies in it's first four months on sale.
The sequal to one of the most highly regarded, and critically aclaimed, games of the last hardware generation, it was well recieved but ultimately divided opinion.
Now Levine, and a fifteen person team, will be moving on to something new with their publisher and studio owner, Take Two. In his post on Irrationalgames.com Levine says that he will focus on narrative driven games that are highly replayable.
"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."
It remains unclear whether the decision to wind-down the larger team was Levine's or rested with Take Two.
Twitter has been overwhelmed with offers of new jobs for those affected by other developers since the news broke.
Best of luck to all the folks at Irrational. BTW, we have over 70 open positions! http://t.co/x21zkcploT
— Wes Phillips (@WesPhillips) February 18, 2014
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