Shocker: CliffyB leaves Epic

Cliff Bleszinski departs Epic.

And after 20 successful years, good for him. Long-standing studio heads retiring seems to be in vogue this season.

Place your bets, folks. I'm offering 10:1 on "takes a long extended vacation", 3:1 on "founds a new gaming startup", 2:1 on "starts a new pursuit outside gaming" and 30:1 on "goes to another, existing game company."

edited 3rd Oct '12 6:32:06 PM by Elle

He doesn't seem to give a specific reason. Well, at least the fans didn't chase them away, like in the case of Bioware.

The tone of his internal email that some sites have reprinted was along the lines of "It's been 20 years, it was tons of fun and I'll miss you guys."

That ended up being false. :/

Eh, good riddance, I'd say. I feel that Bleszinski, as time went on, forgot about the PC crowd that loved his Unreal series. Granted, I doubt that the company's direction will change with his departure, but at least they don't have someone who has fallen from grace anymore.

Given some of the shockingly unenlightened things he's said about PC gaming and used games, I'm fine with this.

Yeah, I'm not particularly sad about this.

So, how long until people who didn't like how Gears of War 3 wasn't exactly what they wanted decide that Cliffy B is obviously lying about his reasons for leaving?

"That ended up being false. :/"

And everyone who actually listened to them knew that already, unlike the Retarders who think that, unless someone says exactly what they want them to say, they're liars.

edited 4th Oct '12 8:42:55 AM by RhetoricHunter

Are there other people at Epic?

so what kind of things has he said about pc gaming and used games?

Eh, no game developer really likes used game sales at it bites them in ass

He basically went off on a rather unpolitic rant about saying that Gears (the first one) should have demanded everyone's credit card number the first time it was played on a particular machine, because first-week used game sales were TAKING AWAY HIS HARD-EARNED MONEY and HAD CUT WHAT THE GAME SHOULD HAVE MADE IN HALF and some other things suggesting both entitlement and a poor grasp of math.

He made similar accusations regarding PC games, only with more complaints about piracy to go with the used games comments. This sort of outburst is never a good thing to do for many reasons, but the unfiltered look we got at CliffyB's idea of the gaming public was pretty disturbing. Whenever somebody views themselves as in an adversarial relationship with their customers, even a little, they've lost the plot.

edited 4th Oct '12 3:56:49 PM by Night

Wonder who's gonna be the "Face" of the company now.

I also didn't particularly care for his comments about Nintendo and/or the Wii.

Marcus Fenix?

edited 4th Oct '12 4:12:33 PM by CorrTerek

I hated the direction he let the art take after the first Unreal.. Their decision to copy Quake and make everybody hulking WWE wrestlers who cut off their sleeves kind of threw me off kilter, and the original Unreal, a series that I played a lot as a kid, essentially died and stayed around as a zombie(unreal tournament).

The original Unreal had so much thought, detail, and story to it.. None of the games since have had any real bearing on that.

Huh, I still have Unreal hanging around on my steam list. I had way more fun with it then I thought I would. It was just a bonus I got along with the Unreal Tournament games I wanted... And it ended up being the game I played the most.

Gotta love the old school FPS.