Month: January 2019

Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski has revealed his next project, and it’s probably not what you expect. Bleszinski is becoming a co-producer on the musical Hadestown. The game developer, who also founded LawBreakers studio Boss Key which has since closed down, invested in Hadestown at an undisclosed amount to become a co-producer.

“Crazy, eh?!” Bleszinski said about the announcement.

At the end of December, Bleszinski said he would probably never work in the video game industry again. He found massive success at Epic with the Gears of War franchise, and he no doubt made a sizeable chunk of money when Tencent invested in Epic. After leaving Epic he started his own studio, Boss Key, but its games–LawBreakers and Radical Heights, failed to find audiences, and the studio closed down.

In a deleted tweet captured by Eurogamer, Bleszinski said he was distancing himself from video games because the culture around them can be “toxic AF.”

As for Hades town, it’s a Greek history story from singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell that tells two connecting love stories between Orpheus and Eurydice and king Hades and Persephone.

In addition to his co-producing role on Hadestown, Bleszinski is writing a book about his life.

The Gears of War franchise is now run by Microsoft, which bought the series from Epic back in 2014 for an undisclosed sum. As for Epic, it’s doing quite well right now thanks to the massive success of Fortnite. In fact, it was Bleszinski who revealed Fortnite to the world seven years ago.

Activision Blizzard, the gaming giant behind franchises like Call of Duty, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Diablo, has lost one of its senior executives. The California-based publisher announced that chief financial officer Spencer Neumann was notified on December 31 that his contract with Activision Blizzard was terminated.

The company decided to terminate Neumann’s contract “for cause unrelated to the Company’s financial reporting or disclosure controls and procedures,” Activision Blizzard said in US Securities & Exchange Commission filing.

Neumann is now on paid leave, and he’s been given the opportunity to “demonstrate why cause does not exist to terminate his employment or why termination of his employment is not otherwise justified.”

Activision Blizzard chief corporate officer Dennis Durkin is taking over for Neumann as CFO in the interim. Should Neumann end up leaving Activision Blizzard, Durkin will officially step into the role of CFO, the company said.

A source told Reuters that Neumann is leaving Activision Blizzard to join video streaming giant Netflix. Netflix’s former CFO, David Wells, announced last August that he was leaving the company after 14 years. The source told Reuters that Netflix wanted its next CFO to be based in Los Angeles, which Neumann is.

According to Reuters, Neumann is expected to start at Netflix in early 2019, so an official announcement might be coming soon.

Neumann had been Activision Blizzard’s CFO since May 2017. Before joining the company, he rose through the ranks at Disney, eventually becoming the CFO of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.