Judas Game Looking to Recruit Ex-Arkane Austin Devs

08.05.2024 - 19:54 / gamerant.com / Arkane Austin / Ken Levine / Arkane Studios / Murillo Zerbinatto

Ken Levine, founder of Ghost Story Games and creator of the game Judas, said he's interested in recruiting developers from Arkane Austin, one of the developers recently shut down by Microsoft. Arkane Austin, not to be confused with Arkane Lyon, produced games like Prey and Redfall, while the latter was responsible for Deathloop and the upcoming Marvel's Blade. Now, some developers from Arkane Austin may join the Judas team.

Judas is the newest project by Ken Levine, creator of the BioShock series. After the closure of Irrational Games, Levine co-founded Ghost Story Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive. Judas was revealed at The Game Awards 2022 and was welcomed by fans as a spiritual successor to BioShock, even though BioShock 4 had already announced its development back in 2019. According to Take-Two's fiscal report, Judas is scheduled for the fiscal year 2026, which spans from April 2025 to March 2026, suggesting considerable time to onboard new members to the game's team.

According to Levine's tweet, the creator believes that former developers from Arkane Austin can help Judas' development. He mentions that the team is interested in recruiting people with the talent set of Arkane Austin developers, especially in design. Ken Levine has always been a vocal supporter of Arkane Austin's games, praising all their games and calling Prey: Mooncrash the best DLC ever made. It's a kind gesture in the midst of a tumultuous time in the gaming industry, which is experiencing layoffs at several major publishers much more frequently than in the past.

Just yesterday, Microsoft closed four studios under Bethesda's umbrella. They were Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Games, and Tango Gameworks, while Roundhouse Studios is being absorbed by ZeniMax Online Studios and technically ceasing to exist. At the moment, it isn't known precisely how many people lost their jobs. These Bethesda shutdowns came four months after Microsoft laid off 1,900 staff from its gaming division. At the time, ZeniMax employees were also affected.

The gaming industry has been in a dire situation for quite some time now. Microsoft justified the shutdown of these four studios as a «reprioritization of titles and resources.» In January, the trillion-dollar corporation said that many jobs were overlapping after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, justifying the layoffs. On the other hand, some reject corporate talk and believe that some layoffs could have been avoided. Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vinckle blames the gaming layoffs on corporate greed and encouraged all laid-off developers to apply to Larian Studios.