As studio heads depart
Hangar 13 studio head Haden Blackman has departed from the company. In an announcement made internally earlier this week and shared with several media outlets, owners 2K Games said that Haden was “leaving the company to pursue his passion at a new endeavor.” Meanwhile, anonymous sourcestalking to Kotakusay that a Mafia prequel is in early development.
Although the announcement doesn’t mention it, it looks like Blackman wasn’t the only departure, with chief operating officer Matthew Urban also leaving the company according to a post on LinkedIn.
According to Kotaku’s sources, the new Mafia game will use Unreal Engine 5 rather than theMafia 3engine used for that game and the recent remasters. The switch would continue a trend of developers moving from in-house engines to Unreal, including the nextThe Witcher gameandTomb Raider game.
Mafia 1 was one of my favourite games, once upon a time. I don’t know if I have a huge appetite to go back to the series, but I do want more people to make city-set open world games around the margins of what Rockstar do. Hopefully Hangar 13 make something interesting.
