Indie gaming giant sees whole staff quit after boss walks away from negotiations

WHILE the gaming industry has experienced layoffs left and right, one publisher has had all of its staff resign in a mass walkout.

Annapurna Interactive is best known as one of the best publishers of indie games, with titles like Stray, The Outer Wilds, and Cocoon all under its name.

Geometric Interactive

Cocoon was nominated for multiple awards at The Game Awards[/caption]

However, after staff failed to meet an agreement with owner Megan Ellison, all 25 employees resigned.

As first reported by Bloomberg, Annapurna Interactive’s president Nathan Gary and other executives were the first to resign before two dozen other staff members followed suit.

Gary and the group said in a statement: “All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned.

“This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly.”

Members of Annapurna Interactive were in talks with Ellison about making the video game division a separate entity.

However, when Ellison walked out of negotiations, the resignations began.

Ellison told Bloomberg: “Our top priority is continuing to support our developer and publishing partners during this transition.

“We’re committed to not only our existing slate of games but also expanding our presence in the interactive space as we continue to look for opportunities to take a more integrated approach to linear and interactive storytelling across film and TV, gaming, and theatre.”

Game developers who were working with Annapurna to publish their games were reportedly sent into chaos.

Annapurna Interactive not only funded these games, but also helped with marketing, quality assurance, and localisation.

President Hector Sanchez told Bloomberg that Annapurna will honour all existing contracts for games.

However, these developers have reportedly “scrambled to find new points of contact” and get clarity about the state of their projects.

Sanchez also stated that the staff would be replaced, though gave no timeline for when this would take place.

People were concerned that this would affect Remedy after the studio signed a deal with Annapurna for Control 2 as well as TV and film adaptations of its games.

However, Remedy has denied that there will be issues going forward as the studio remains independent.

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