According to Irrational Games (Co) founder Ken Levine they are closing down the studio after 17 years. This does not mean that BioShock is going to go away. In fact they plan on moving that title to 2K Games who owns Irrational Games anyway. Moving forward 2K Games will be responsible for “the BioShock universe”. Just exactly what this means is up for debate. It could mean that 2K will continue development of future DLC and also future titles under the BioShock name. It could also simply mean that the name and rights have transferred to 2K now that Irrational Games as an entity is going away.

The latter is unlikely though as BioShock is a huge title and one that still has legs with not only characters, but also in pushing the concept to a wider realm (Perhaps Rapture and Columbia meet?). It would not take too much to build in the franchise especially with having a core team from Irrational Games close at hand to offer guidance for any new projects.

Levine also makes mention that some of the staff of Irrational Games will be transitioned saying; “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.” We imagine that many of these developers will be absorbed into 2K to keep the same talent pool available. Levine will be moving to a different role inside 2k where he sates he will begin working on a “different kind of game than we’ve done before” and will shift back to a smaller development team to do so. In other words the core team that built BioShock for us is staying at 2K.

In the long run the company that gave us BioShock is going away in name, but the talent, imagination and creative drive are not leaving. We fully expect to see more titles like BioShock and SystemShock coming down the road from this team. As Levine says “If we’re lucky, we’ll build something half as memorable as BioShock” and if they do it will be a good day for all of us.

Tell us what you think in our forum