The entire staff of Annapurna Interactive, the video-game publishing division of Megan Ellison’s Annapurna studio, resigned this month following a dispute with its owner, according to people familiar with the situation.
Annapurna Interactive President Nathan Gary and his team had been negotiating with Ellison, the daughter of billionaire Larry Ellison, to spin off the video-game division as an independent entity, said the people, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to share the information with the press. When Ellison pulled out of the negotiations, Gary and other executives resigned and were followed by around two dozen other staffers.
One of my favorite game publishers, this is wild (and not the Outer kind of wild). I’m super curious if the entire staff will start their own publishing company (which I imagine is harder to do without the financial backing of a billionaire’s daughter) or if they’ll split off and go their separate ways.
I’m also very curious if this will start changing the kinds of games Annapurna publishes or if they’ll still take interest in odd and niche games that need a publisher. I wish I knew more about the dispute here but time will tell what happens next at some point.
Didn’t they just sign a large deal with Remedy? Yikes.
Luckily, that deal is fine.
https://x.com/jasonschreier/status/1834359607621238858?s=46&t=EUtgwMByNj4sQbVP9INV-Q
good news there. would of (woulda) been a massive hit for the remedy team.
Would have
(Sorry I never do this but it’s one of my biggest pet peeves in writing because so many of my friends do it and I can’t correct them because I’d feel like a douche but under the veil of anonymity on the internet I feel safer being that douche sorry aaaaa)
hope the edit helps
heyo yeee I fuck with woulda
perfect!
YOU’RE perfect <3
Seems as if the team was demanding equity in the form of the spinoff, and ownership ultimately decided they weren’t going to give it to them, and now their whole team quit. Power move. Now ownership is going to try to get some of those people back by offering them huge sign on bonuses and equity, wonder how many are going to go for it, or if they’ll stand pat as a group.
Hopefully they’ll be able to spin up an alternative studio/publisher that gamedevs can trust
While I’m not sure if the people who quit were part of Anapurna’s previous controversies, this still seems like a poor move from Ellison by losing skilled employees in this fashion
Power to the Anapurna staff that quit✊
Holy shit, lot of games under that wing.
