Half of The Initiative Staff Members Have Reportedly Left the Studio

Xbox studio The Initiative, which is working on a Perfect Dark reboot, has reportedly lost approximately half of its core development team including a number of senior employees. According to the analysis of employee LinkedIn profiles (via VGC), 34 people have left Microsoft's internal studio over the past year.

The studio's multiple exits include design director Drew Murray, who returned to Insomniac Games, game director Dan Neuburger who left the studio in March 2022, principal world builder Jolyon Myers, lead level designer Chris O’Neill, and more.

Apart from The Initiative’s senior design team, writers, directors, engineers, and QA staff also left the studio, which now, according to analysis, has less than 50 people.

Former employees note that there is no creative autonomy in The Initiative, and the development of the game is too slow. Speaking to VCG, they described the wave of departures as "fast and furious" and pointed out that the project momentum was "heavily affected".

Several ex-staff members also outlined The Initiative's development hierarchy as a "top-down" environment with studio head Darrell Gallagher and game director Dan Neuburger controlling a lot of creative decisions, saying that senior team members were frustrated by the lack of autonomy, and "didn't feel heard" on key development issues.

The problems coincided with the announcement that The Initiative was partnering with Crystal Dynamics to co-develop Perfect Dark – the authorities assumed that with the support of the second studio, the production of the shooter would go faster.

In an interview with VGC, the head of The Initiative, Darrell Gallagher, did not mention problems, but rather noted that he was confident in the current team, as well as new people who joined them recently. "It’s no small task to build a studio and reinvent a beloved franchise," he said. "In creating The Initiative, we set out to leverage co-development partnerships to achieve our ambitions, and we’re really excited about all the progress we’re seeing with our relationship with Crystal Dynamics".

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