In the last few hours, Annapurna Interactive staff has resigned following a dispute with its owner, Megan Ellison (CEO of Annapurna Pictures). Bloomberg reporter, Jason Schreier, first broke the news in the early hours of Friday morning in an exclusive article for the website.
The dispute was said to be centred around a creating a spin-off video game division working as an independent entity. Following the break-down in talks, the staff handed in their resignations. Former Annapurna Interactive President, Nathan Gary stated,"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.”
Annapurna's public position is more on reassuring developer and publishing partners during what Ellison describes as “this transition”.
Annapurna Interactive is a publishing subsidiary, with two dozen independent titles set to be released under their name in the coming months, including an upcoming Silent Hill title. The article reports that firm has been in contact with Bloomberg stating that it will continue to support these projects and expand, "although it will now need to replace its lost employees or outsource some of the functions, which includes marketing, localisation, QA, PR and platform relations", as the piece describes.
With Remedy recently signing a deal with Annapurna for Control 2 and TV, the future of the collaboration has naturally been a topic of discussion in gaming circles. Jason wrote an update on what he had discovered, "Since a lot of people are asking: Remedy's deal for Control 2 and Alan Wake is with the broader company, Annapurna Pictures, and is not impacted by the departure of Annapurna Interactive's staff."
In an uncertain time for the video games industry, the decision for the full staff to resign sends a heavy message. At present, there are a lot of unknowns in the story, though Schreier is looking to expand his reporting in the coming days stating on Twitter, "I know there are still a lot of lingering questions about what happened at Annapurna Interactive and why the entire staff resigned. I'm still reporting and hope to publish a follow-up story in the coming weeks."
Update (15/09/2024): Thomas Puha, Remedy's Communication Director regarding the deal on tweeted on Friday morning: "Many of you are reaching out about the news around Annapurna (sorry to see what is going on to all involved ) Interactive. Thank you for your care! Remedy's deal for Control 2, including Alan Wake and Control AV rights, is with Annapurna Pictures, and we are self-publishing Control 2. (I hope I made sense; its 5am in Finland and I'm jet lagged)" (Source)
