Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. laid off about a third of the staff at Cloud Chamber, the studio behind the next BioShock game, according to people familiar with the move.
Cloud Chamber, which has offices in Novato, California, and Montreal, cut more than 80 jobs Tuesday as part of a reorganization, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. The studio had about 250 employees before the cuts.
The game will also be delayed from a previously planned release in late 2026 or early 2027, said the people. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Cloud Chamber had pushed out its studio head and creative director following development hiccups on the next game in the BioShock series, which has sold more than 43 million copies.
2K Games, the Take-Two label that publishes BioShock, confirmed it was making the job cuts, although it didn't specify a number. When asked for comment, a spokesperson shared an email sent to staff by 2K President David Ismailer.
"While we're excited about the foundational gameplay elements of the project, we've made the decision with studio leadership to rework certain aspects that are core to a BioShock game, and in doing so are reducing the size of the development team to focus on this work and give the game more time in development," Ismailer wrote.
The extension adds even more years to what has already become one of the longest-running productions in the video-game industry. This new BioShock has been in development for more than a decade across multiple studios and cycled through several leadership teams, the people said.
Plans started in 2014, a year after 2K released BioShock Infinite, the third entry in the series, from Boston-based developer Irrational Games. Director Ken Levine decided to leave and start a smaller studio within Take-Two, leading 2K to shutter Irrational and lay off its staff.
But executives at 2K knew they wanted to keep the popular franchise going and began hunting for a developer to work on a new title. They landed on Certain Affinity, an independent company in Austin best known for doing co-development work on big shooter franchises such as Halo and Call of Duty. They also brought in veteran writer Corey May to lead the game's narrative.
Certain Affinity worked on the game, which was code-named Parkside, for roughly two years, but ran into some difficulties. Executives at 2K, eager to take more control of development, began negotiating a deal to purchase Certain Affinity. The acquisition fell through at the finish line, and at the end of 2016, Take-Two instead decided to start its own in-house studio to lead development on the game.
In 2017, a small group of leaders at 2K began hiring for what would become Cloud Chamber. They brought over May and recruited several BioShock veterans, including art director Scott Sinclair, design director Jonathan Pelling and creative director Hogarth de la Plante. They brought forward some ideas from the previous project, such as the setting and time period. For this new game, the team also took inspiration from so-called "immersive sims" such as 2017's Prey, which give players multiple possible solutions to each obstacle.
Over the next few years, Cloud Chamber tried to simultaneously build a studio and a game, which was a lofty challenge. The team eventually put together a "vertical slice," or a demo of the game that would allow executives to gauge their progress, and the results were impressive. There was just one big problem: It was developed in Unreal Engine 4, an older iteration of Epic Games Inc.'s technology platform, which might make the game feel dated when it inevitably released. Cloud Chamber decided to switch to the more modern Unreal Engine 5, which required a significant overhaul and likely added several years to the timeline.
The team produced a second vertical slice several years later that received glowing feedback from 2K executives, but behind the scenes, the game was facing problems. Many were typical to big-budget game development: technical issues and a lack of clear vision for the final product. Over the past year, the team expanded quickly before it had some basic production pipelines in place, according to the people. Several leaders, including May and Sinclair, departed along the way.
Perhaps the biggest issue was the pressure of making a new entry in a critically beloved franchise. The first BioShock is widely considered to be one of the greatest games of all time thanks to its dystopian story and melancholic atmosphere, and subsequent sequels have also been lauded for their narrative ambitions.
Internal reviews of the new BioShock earlier this year pegged it as fine but not exceptional and identified narrative issues, which led to the leadership change. "Right now, we have a good game, but we are committed to delivering a great one," a 2K spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg earlier this month.
Now, after the mass layoffs at Cloud Chamber, questions linger about what comes next. Stunned workers said in conversations with Bloomberg that they feel like they are getting the blame for poor decisions made above their heads.
This week, 2K also said it was bringing in a new studio head: Rod Fergusson, a familiar name to fans of the series. Fergusson has a reputation in the video-game industry as a "closer" — someone who comes onto struggling projects to help get them out the door. One of his previous jobs was at Irrational Games, which he joined in August 2012 to steer the completion of another troubled production: the last BioShock game.
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