where famous developers work after leaving companies

The most notable event of the past week was the scandal within OpenAI. The director and creator of ChatGPT, Sam Altman, who was fired from his own startup, moved to Microsoft. Now he will help the Mikes develop their own AI. Against the background of this event, we decided to recall where smart personnel go after the successful launch of their brainchild (games, technology, AI, etc.), realizing that they have reached a certain ceiling within the company and that the employer merely holds them back. Today we will talk about some striking examples from our industry.

The rightful father of the Mafia series was the head writer of the first game and later led the development of the next installment. Vavra gained experience creating the game by watching films and studying literature from the 1950s. On For Mafia 2, the studio allocated more money, which meant it had more control over development and made its own adjustments. Moreover, the gameplay and game mechanics were created without Vavra’s participation, which only made the situation worse. As a result, the final version of the idea differed and Daniel left the studio, saying that he had lost control and did not want to dance to someone else’s tune. A ready-made script had been written for the farewell gift Mafia 3, but the studio rejected his ideas.

After this, Daniel Vavra founded his own small company, Warhorse Studios. With the help of Kickstarter and additional investment, he was able to release Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The game received the award for “best Czech game of the decade” and Daniel Vavra was on the cover of Czech Forbes.

The honored “grandfather” of the GTA series, who produced it for a long time, and at the same time was the president of Rockstar North. Unlike Daniel Vavre, Benzies did not leave his post alone; he was demoted without the possibility of reinstatement.

Instead of ending his career, Leslie Benzies opened five small gaming companies at once. Of the most important announcements we can note the sandbox Everywhere, which would be released in 2023, as well as a teaser for an unusual AAA game MindsEye.

While we can’t judge his personal developments yet, such a drastic change in control could have an impact on GTA 6 and it might not be the game everyone wants.

Veteran of CD Projekt RED studio, took part in the creation of the script The Witcher, a game designer at the time The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, after which he became one of the game directors Cyberpunk 2077. After 15 years of fruitful work, he quietly left the company, leaving only a small message about it on social networks. The reason for his dismissal was ambitions, which he decided to realize on his own.

Today, Mateusz Kanik runs a small company called Blank. The team isn’t disclosing any details about the projects, promising something revolutionary, without the restrictions that major studios are used to.

Chief designer and director PUBG: Battlegrounds, worked as part of the team of the Korean company Krafton. Brendan’s first gaming project was the DayZ: Battle Royale mod. After which he started promoting the idea of ​​a battle royale, and as a result, PUBG: Battlegrounds appeared. Green was not limited in his resources and imagination, which allowed him to develop the game as he sees it.

Not all his decisions were made unanimously. In 2019, he said he couldn’t allow the transition to a free-to-play model, but after his resignation the company reconsidered its priorities and made PUBG: Battlegrounds free.

After leaving the Korean company, Brendan Greene founded his own small studio, PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions, and focused on creating dynamic open-world games. The developments look impressive, but the end result is still far away.

Former Activision and Infinity Ward employee, creative strategist and face of the series Duty. He actively participated in the development of Activision games, but realized that implementing all his ideas would be risky and unreasonably expensive. That’s why in 2012 he created a new studio, Robotoki, where he is working on a project called Human element.

The game was supposed to be released in 2015 and tell a new story of survival during a zombie apocalypse, but the project was frozen indefinitely. There have been no major announcements from Robert Bowling since then.

Layoffs at large companies take place because of ambition, the desire to create something unique, bypassing company policy. But creating something from scratch is always difficult and takes much longer than planned. This is why there aren’t as many successful independent startup developers as we would like.