Despite the of Annapurna Interactive—whose entire staff quit earlier this week—the its parent company, Annapurna Pictures, made with Alan Wake developer Remedy Entertainment will remain intact, according to the studio's communications director .
Annapurna Pictures, not Annapurna Interactive, signed a deal with Remedy to co-fund the development of Control 2 and to gain the rights to adapt Control and Alan Wake for film and television. The partnership was only announced a few weeks ago, which sparked questions about its status when the and reported that the senior leadership team and all 25 employees of the video game publishing arm of the company had left.
But as Bloomberg reporter and Remedy's [[link]] Puha clarified on X, the deal was always tied to Annapurna Pictures, not Annapurna Interactive, and hasn't been affected. Puha said Remedy is self-publishing Control 2.
As for the games Annapurna Interactive is publishing, it doesn't look like the mass employee exodus is necessarily going to stop them from releasing on time. Several developers have confirmed that their games are still on track to release normally, including , , and . "[You] can assume at this stage that Lushfoil Photography Sim will be unaffected, given that the game itself is mostly complete," Newell wrote on X.
"Our top priority is continuing to support our developer and publishing partners during this transition," Annapurna owner and founder Megan Ellison said in a statement to Bloomberg. The publisher, which started in 2016, rose in popularity after publishing several popular games like Outer Wilds, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Stray. It has over 10 announced games set to release this year and beyond.
The future of Annapurna Interactive is unclear. If it's going to provide the publishing support it's promised its partners, it'll have to hire an entirely new staff, which at the very least will be disruptive to developers who've spent potentially years working with the old staff. I hope things go well, but the effects of this news might take a while to fully shake out.