Industry veteran Glen Schofield, known as the founder of Visceral Games and later of Sledgehammer Games, has left Striking Distance Studios, according to a scoop by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. In the reported statement, Glen Schofield said his departure was a bittersweet one, although he leaves the studio in the good hands of Chief Development Officer Steve Papoutsis, who will step into the CEO role. Papoutsis and Schofield have worked together on eleven games, including the original Dead Space.
Glen Schofield isn’t the only one to leave Striking Distance Studios, as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) are also departing. While parent company KRAFTON said the departures are all voluntary, they are clearly related to the failure of The Callisto Protocol, the studio’s debut game.
Labeled as a spiritual successor to Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol turned out to be quite underwhelming. It earned a 7.2 score here on Wccftech from Kai Powell:
While an incredible looker in screenshots and death scenes, The Callisto Protocol suffers from a lack of intriguing content that makes the twelve-plus hour journey through Black Iron Prison worth two, even perhaps one single playthrough. Crafting and skill trees are both minimal in nature (with both costing a heavy amount of credits where players might only be able to fully upgrade two or three weapons in the full playthrough), while melee combat and combat encounters as a whole feel largely scripted. The horror elements stand out as reason alone to play Striking Distance’s debut horror game, but you might want to find yourself getting thrown back into Black Iron Prison rather than see the journey through to the end.
On top of that, it was the worst example of Unreal Engine 4 shader-based stuttering on PC. The low Metacritic score caused KRAFTON’s stock to drop by nearly 8.5%. In early 2023, we learned that Glen Schofield and his development team had a budget of over $160 million, while sales were far lower than the projected five million units.
Last month, KRAFTON confirmed 32 Striking Distance Studios employees had been laid off, though the studio’s plans reportedly remain unaffected.
