February 19, 2014 by Paul Curtin
Bad news today for the gaming industry as the studio responsible for the best of the BioShock series, System Shock, and a handful of other great games, is closing up shop.
Ken Levine, who co-founded Irrational Games over 17 years ago, just announced the sad news. All but 15-or-so people will be let go with the rest of the development team at Irrational reforming on a much smaller scale and focusing on smaller, more personal endeavors.
Levine’s new studio will remain at Take-Two, along with the rights to the BioShock franchise, which will likely be given to another studio. Who knows if fans will ever see BioShock come to the PlayStation Vita as the upcoming Infinite DLC will be the last from Irrational.
His mind might not be completely focused on video games at the moment after being brought on to pen the Logan’s Run remake for Warner Bros., but Levine’s heart is clearly still there as you can see in his current Twitter feed that he’s using to try to help spread the word on developers being letting go in an effort to help them find new homes.
BioShock Infinite got a bit over-hyped after its jaw-dropping E3 preview, which it couldn’t fully live up to, leading to the gaming community split between lovers and haters. Still, no matter which side you fall on, it’s a damn shame to see another one of the big players in the industry scaling things down after releasing one of the highest rated games of 2013.
