Psychonauts Developer Double Fine Responds to Closure Reports With a Single Emoji

Psychonauts developer Double Fine has responded to the reports of its imaginable closure with a azygous emoji.

The San Francisco workplace is 1 of a fig of Microsoft-owned developers reportedly warring for their aboriginal amid a important shakeup astatine Xbox that is expected to effect successful layoffs crossed the gaming concern aboriginal this month. Hellblade developer Ninja Theory, which announced its caller crippled Senua astatine Xbox Games Showcase conscionable implicit a week ago, and South of Midnight shaper Compulsion are besides reportedly successful negotiations with Microsoft implicit a imaginable buyout successful a bid to debar closure.

Tim Schafer’s Double Fine is possibly astir celebrated for the Psychonauts franchise. Microsoft bought the workplace successful June 2019 and signed connected arsenic Psychonauts 2 publisher. Double Fine past released Keeper successful 2025 and Kiln earlier this year, some of which were not commercialized hits.

Yesterday, The Game Business reported that Xbox Game Studios brag Craig Duncan had stepped down. News of assorted Microsoft studios perchance closing down was not acold behind. IGN has asked Microsoft for remark but it is yet to respond.

Double Fine did contented a azygous emoji societal media post, summing up however it feels close now: a smiling look with unfastened rima and acold sweat.

Double Fine's emoji societal media station sums up the concern the workplace finds itself in.

According to Bloomberg, Compulsion, Ninja Theory, and Double Fine aren’t the lone Microsoft studios presently negotiating with Xbox to effort to debar closure. There is the imaginable for immoderate oregon each to bargain their mode to independence, though that would apt travel alongside layoffs, too.

Earlier this month, caller Xbox brag Asha Sharma warned of a institution "reset" that astir took arsenic a awesome that Microsoft planned large layoffs and workplace closures. One expert told IGN "the studios astir exposed are superb for prestige and rotten for the spreadsheet." Microsoft was past said to beryllium speeding up improvement connected caller The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Halo games arsenic it considered restructuring oregon adjacent spinning disconnected its gaming branch.

Sharma's ground-shaking memo revealed that Microsoft's gaming concern presently has a 3% accountability borderline (assumed to mean nett margin), which is down year-on-year. "Excluding Activision Blizzard King, implicit the past 5 years, we person spent implicit $20 cardinal connected ongoing investments successful our content, platform, and hardware subsidy, but our yearly gross has declined astir fractional a cardinal during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue," Sharma said.

Following the merchandise of the memo, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said "there's much monetization of Xbox games happening connected YouTube" than astatine Xbox, adding that the Xbox squad needed to fig retired however to "innovate some successful hardware, arsenic good arsenic successful the games, going guardant successful an economically viable way."

"No 1 tin impeach Microsoft of not having invested for the past 25 years," Nadella added. "Now, we person to crook this into a sustainable concern that delivers what is fundamentally 1 of the champion sources of entertainment, still."

This week’s quality marks a important U-turn connected Xbox marque sentiment, aft Sharma had started to crook halfway fans astir with a fig of crowd-pleasing changes specified arsenic the determination to marque The Coalition's Gears of War: E-Day and inXile's Clockworld Revolution console exclusives. The Xbox layoffs are expected to travel into effect astatine the extremity of Microsoft's fiscal twelvemonth connected June 30.

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News astatine IGN. Find him connected Twitter astatine @wyp100. You tin scope Wesley astatine [email protected] oregon confidentially astatine [email protected].