Developer Jeff Strain has founded two major gaming companies in the last 20 years: ArenaNet (Guild Wars) and Undead Labs (State of Decay). Previously, he worked at Blizzard on major gaming classics. But now it’s all over, his faith in his new company is shaken. All of this after a single phone call.
Where is Jeff Strain known from?
- Jeff Strain was Lead Programmer at Blizzard Entertainment, working on World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft 3.
- Strain co-founded ArenaNet in 2000 with two others and was the head of the Production Team for the first Guild Wars, a celebrated MMORPG to this day.
- In 2009, he founded Undead Labs and was the lead developer of State of Decay 1, which was also an important game.
Guild Wars 2 is still running today and is among the best MMORPGs currently available:
What was his new plan? Strain had now founded a third studio: Possibility Space. They were working on a game, but had not revealed what kind of game it would be. Only the project name “Vonnegut” was known.
“Today is their last day as employees of our studio”
Here’s how it turned out: Employees received an email stating that they are being let go and the studio is dissolving. Strain himself wants to withdraw from the gaming industry and take care of his wife, who is ill.
Why is he doing this? In an email to the employees, which was obtained by a Polygon journalist, Strain writes (via twitter): He received a call from journalist Ethan Gach from the US site Kotaku. He is currently writing about his company and the closure of Crop Circle Games, a video game company that Strain operated together with his now ill wife.
In the conversation, the journalist mentioned some business details that are strictly confidential. The journalist said he received them from current employees.
Employees have apparently leaked company secrets to the press
Strain says: This is alarming. He immediately met with the publishing partner of the company and disclosed the breach of trust. The partner lost faith in investing more money in the company. Therefore, they agreed to cancel the project “Vonnegut”.
Without the project, he is closing the studio. Today is the last day for all employees.
What kind of information is that? Nobody knows. The article Gach is writing is not online yet.
What else is known? Even the closure of the studio he operated with his wife was strange. Because his wife said she feared that the Kotaku author’s article would publish details about her health condition.
He denied on LinkedIn, however, that he intended to do so.
Gach comments on the news on Twitter and regrets that more video game developers have lost their jobs. He does not comment on his own role:
The closure of the studio Crop Circle Games has officially occurred because they did not see a good financial chance for the projects. However, other people in the studio contradicted this.
The last time we reported on Strain it was about State of Decay 2:
State of Decay 2 will not be a zombie MMO because the fans don’t want it
