The other shoe has dropped at Cloud Chamber. Following an internal delay and management shakeup, the studio making BioShock 4 has now laid off 80 people, Bloomberg reports. Originally, the sequel had supposedly been targeting a late 2026 release, but it will likely take longer now as significant aspects of the game, including the story, are reworked.
Layoffs announced on Tuesday amounted to about a third of the staff at the roughly 250-person studio. According to Bloomberg, the next BioShock has gone through multiple studios and leadership teams over the last decade, with problems arising at Cloud Chamber in part due to the need to create a new studio while also meeting sky-high expectations for the franchise. One of the stumbling blocks was reportedly its rapid growth and the game’s shift to the newest version of Unreal Engine.
“While we’re excited about the foundational gameplay elements of the project, we’ve made the decision with studio leadership to rework certain aspects that are core to a BioShock game, and in doing so are reducing the size of the development team to focus on this work and give the game more time in development,” 2K Games president David Ismailer wrote in a memo to staff this week that was shared with Kotaku.
Bloomberg reported earlier this month that BioShock 4’s latest stumble occurred following a negative internal review with executives, with particular concern about the game’s narrative. Publicly, 2K Games has said that the new BioShock is good but not good enough. “Some of our competitors have realized maybe a little late in the day that consumers are not okay with okay,” Strauss Zelnick, CEO of 2K parent company Take-Two, told IGN in a recent interview. Industry veteran Rod Fergusson is now leading the project, the second time he’s been tasked with clawing a BioShock game out of development hell.
