“More than half of the team is now at Intercept Games,” Roundy wrote. The swift demise of Star Theory and the events of its three final months, which have not been previously reported, highlight the frailty of those business relationships and the power dynamics within the industry.īrian Roundy, a spokesman for Private Division, said the company contacted “every member of the development team” at Star Theory with an invitation to join the new studio, called Intercept Games. Publishers like Take-Two control a project’s financing, marketing and distribution, giving them a great deal of leverage over most developers they sign.Īttendees play Borderlands 3 video game by Take-Two during the E3 Expo in Los Angeles in 2019. Take-Two cultivated a leading position in publishing through a mix of big-budget games developed in-house and by a tightknit group of studio partners. The stock is up 10% this year and trading near an all-time high, thanks to increased demand from people stuck at home. The company behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise is one of America’s largest publishers, with a market value of $15 billion. By March, as the coronavirus pandemic choked the global economy, any hope of saving the business appeared to be lost, and Star Theory closed its doors.Įven by the cutthroat standards of the video game business, Take-Two’s tactics were extreme. Take-Two hired more than a third of Star Theory’s staff, including the studio head and creative director. The next few weeks were chaos, employees said. Berry and Mavor encouraged employees to stick together and stay at the company. The game’s cancellation was a shock, but the founders assured staff that Star Theory still had money in the bank and could try to sign other deals, according to five people who attended the meeting and asked not to be identified, citing the risk of litigation. The two men had been in discussions about selling their company to Take-Two but were dissatisfied with the terms, they explained. When employees returned to the office on Monday, Star Theory founders Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor convened an all-hands meeting. “We are offering a compensation package that includes a cash sign-on bonus, an excellent salary, bonus eligibility and other benefits,” Cook wrote. Take-Two was looking to hire all of Star Theory’s development staff to make that happen. The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Without it, the independent studio was in serious trouble. The contract with Take-Two was the studio’s only source of revenue at the time. Normally, an announcement like this would be delivered in a companywide meeting or an email from Star Theory’s leadership team. It was strange and disconcerting news to Star Theory’s employees. “To that end, we encourage you to apply for a position with us.” “This was an incredibly difficult decision for us to make, but it became necessary when we felt business circumstances might compromise the development, execution and integrity of the game,” Michael Cook, an executive producer at Private Division, a publishing label within Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., wrote in the message, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. Two, it said the game-in the works for the previous two years-was being pulled from their studio. One, it came from an executive producer at the publishing company funding their next video game. It struck them as bizarre for two reasons. One Friday evening last December, employees of game designer Star Theory Games each received the same unusual recruitment message over LinkedIn. Attendees play a demo of Borderlands 3 from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.'s 2K Games during the E3 Expo in Los Angeles in 2019.
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