Irrational Games, The Company Behind BioShock, Is Shutting Down

Whoa.

Irrational Games, the company that built the acclaimed BioShock video game series, is going away. Co-founder Ken Levine announced directly on the company’s front page this morning that they will soon see sweeping layoffs, and will be reborn as a much smaller team with a new focus.

From his post:

I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it. 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.

Irrational was acquired by Take-Two Interactive in 2006. From 2007-2010, Take-Two renamed the company as “2K Boston” and “2K Austaralia”, and it was under these names that BioShock was published. In 2010, Irrational Games returned to its original name.

The team plans on finishing the last of the downloadable content they’d promised for BioShock Infinite.

Once that’s done, the note says the re-organized team (now stripped down to just fifteen members) will be focused on “narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable”, with all future titles being distributed 100% digitally.

2K Games/Take Two will take control of the BioShock series following the change.