That Tango Gameworks would have a happier ending became apparent last month when news broke that Krafton – the publisher of PUBG – would take over the studio in an effort to save as many developers as possible from the shocking closure.
While Krafton wanted to “acquire the entire development team” (according to a statement from Krafton PR published by Stephen Totilo both in his GameFile newsletter and on Þjórsárden), the publisher failed to attract the full range of talent it had recruited. Here is the full statement:
“KRAFTON plans to transfer approximately 50 development staff from Tango Gameworks to KRAFTON’s Japanese subsidiary. These transferred staff will continue to work on new projects at KRAFTON, including the expansion of the HI-FI RUSH IP.”
That’s almost exactly half the studio’s previous size (via Genki_JPN on Twitter). Given Krafton’s explicit statement that the entire team will be retained, it’s a reasonable assumption that most of Tango Gameworks’ former employees have found new employment – or, more pessimistically, retired from the industry altogether, which isn’t an impossible prospect given the dire state of affairs.
The deal, Totilo writes, was “effective on August 1” – so there was a gap of about three months between the first store closures in May and the certainty that Tango would not close its doors forever.
Tango Gameworks’ current website has several job postings – the studio is looking for animators and programmers, but also sound, environment and UI designers, as well as VFX, character and concept artists. That’s a broad list of talent, but whether Krafton intends to bring its headcount back to pre-closure levels remains to be seen.
According to Krafton’s initial statement earlier this week, the studio seems to be focusing on the Hi-Fi Rush IP in particular – which is tracks. Although Ghostwire: Tokyo did not perform disastrously, Hi-Fi Rush has more captured the public’s imagination as an exciting and vibrant new IP and according to Aaron Greenberg of Microsoft’s own words: “was a huge success for us and our players by all important metrics and expectations.” Which, as you can imagine, makes Tango’s closure all the more puzzling.
