3 years 3 months ago
Link
V1 Interactive, the development studio behind RTS-inspired first-person shooter Disintegration, is closing its doors today.
In an announcement to Twitter today, the studio thanked its staff for their work over the last five years, with CEO and founder Marcus Lehto adding in a separate tweet that this news was not coming as a shock to the studio's employees.
"We’ve been transparent with them about the state of things for months and are making this decision now so they still have ample time to search for new jobs while being supported by our studio," he said. As of the middle of last year, the studio had around 30 employees.
V1 Interactive was founded by Lehto, the co-creator of the Halo franchise, with Disintegration as its only published title. The game was first envisioned as a real-time strategy title, but was gradually shaped into an FPS ahead of its official announcement in July of 2019. It launched in June of last year, but our review of the game said that its simple shooting and squad management made its campaign "fall pretty flat."
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/06/10/disintegration-single-player-review"]
Support for multiplayer was shuttered three months after release, and publisher Take-Two (via its Private Division label) CEO Strauss Zelnick called Disintegration's sales "a bit disappointing."
This is the second Private Division studio to go under in recent years, with development of Kerbal Space Program 2 being moved to a new, internal studio from independent external studio Star Theory in February of 2020, along with half of Star Theory's employees. Those remaining at Star Theory were eventually forced to shutter the studio due to an inability to secure new publishing contracts.
[poilib element="accentDivider"]
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.