It's time for another shake-up in the gaming industry, with Rod Fergusson taking over as studio head at Cloud Chamber, the Take-Two Interactive studio working on the next long-gestating BioShock game.
The news was first reported by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier on BlueSky, who also reported that Cloud Chamber is laying off an "unspecified" number of workers. Fergusson quickly confirmed his new role on BlueSky, sharing that he was now head of the BioShock Franchise.
"I’m deeply grateful for the work the studio has done so far, and I’m committed to building a BioShock game we’ll be proud of and that our players will love," Fergusson says.
Why is Fergusson joining Cloud Chamber now?
This news comes just weeks after a report from Schreier indicated that the next BioShock game was in trouble. Per Schreier, the game recently failed a publisher review, leading to an overhaul that saw the exit of the creative director. A planned remake of the original BioShock was also reportedly put on ice.
Take-Two Interactive first announced Cloud Chamber in 2020, revealing that at long last, the BioShock franchise was set to continue with a new entry. Since then, there's been absolutely nothing seen, with no official trailers or teasers for the game, which still does not technically have a name.
While Cloud Chamber was first officially revealed in 2020, Schreier's report notes that a fourth BioShock game has been in development under Take-Two Interactive for a decade.
Notably, Fergusson announced his exit from Blizzard Entertainment just a few days after the aforementioned report.
Not the first time around
This will now be the second time that Fergusson has joined a team struggling to ship a BioShock game. An experienced producer, Fergusson was brought into Irrational Games (now Ghost Story Games) in 2012 to help fight scope creep and make calls on what to cut in order to help creative director Ken Levine and the rest of the studio.
In 2013, BioShock Infinite shipped, having been in some stage of development for over five years prior. The game saw critical acclaim and commercial success, selling over 11 million copies in a year.
Before his brief but important time at Irrational Games, Fergusson worked at Epic Games with Xbox on the Gears of War franchise.
Since then, Fergusson has worked across a number of properties, including rejoining Microsoft to once again work on Gears of War, leading the team at Xbox Game Studios' The Coalition as the studio shipped Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Gears of War 4, and Gears 5 in 2015, 2016, and 2019, respectively.
In 2020, Fergusson joined Blizzard Entertainment, becoming the head of the Diablo franchise, where he helped ship Diablo 4 in 2023. The game was praised critically, reaching $666 million in revenue after five days.
Blizzard Entertainment would then be bought by Microsoft (alongside the rest of Activision Blizzard King) in a deal that finalized October 2023.
BioShock is important for Take-Two Interactive to get right
While Take-Two Interactive's biggest games are naturally its Rockstar-developed titles like the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, BioShock is important. The BioShock games are renowned for their narrative-driven gameplay, and it's been over 12 years since the last new game launched.
That's an extremely long time. Optimistically, this fourth BioShock title is skipping almost two console generations!
I don't envy the team at Cloud Chamber facing this challenge (and my thoughts are with those affected by the reported layoffs) but I am hopeful that Fergusson's experience will allow this team to ship the game without further serious development setbacks.
