Screen Grab from BioShock Infinite
Eric Convey
Web Editor- Boston Business Journal
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Irrational Games, a big player in the Greater Boston video games space whose revenue has approached $1 billion a year, stunned the industry today by announcing it is closing.
“I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it,” co-founder Kevin Levine wrote in a message posted today on the company’s web page. “I’ll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor.”
Irrational Games, which is owned by video game giant Take-Two Interactive, was best known for its BioShock games. That series and related properties have been responsible for more than $500 million in revenue, Levine said in his note.
The latest BioShock release, BioShock Infinite, was released less than a year ago. Analysts at Cowen Co. wrote that sales exceeded expectations shortly after the launch, and that in March 2013 the game was the top seller in the country.
“(It was) a critical and commercial hit. That’s usually not the sign of a company that’s in dire straits,” said Kyle Orland, senior gaming editor at technology news website Arstechnica.com.
Monty Sharma, managing director of the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute housed at Becker College in Worcester, said it’s not unusual for a commercially viable video game operation to shut down.
“I have seen studios that have essentially fallen apart,” Sharma said. “It’s kind of like a rock band. They’ve put out a number of successful albums and it’s time for somebody to go solo and somebody else to be a producer.”
Levine said he is shutting the company down and keeping only about 15 employees. He could not be reached for comment and did not say in his note how many people were laid off, but former employees using social media put the number at around 100. The smaller headcount will be nimble and allow long-term work on an unidentified new project, Levine wrote.
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