Kentucky Route Zero and Stray publisher Annapurna Interactive has collapsed, with its entire staff quitting en masse

According to the Hollywood Reporter and Bloomberg, prolific videogame publisher Annapurna Interactive has functionally collapsed, with its senior leadership team and the entirety of its over 20-person staff resigning. The shocking move leaves the future of Annapurna's active development deals⁠ in question.

Annapurna Interactive is a subsidiary of Annapurna Pictures, a prolific production company owned and founded by Megan Ellison, daughter of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison. The games division was opened up in 2016 under the auspices of some industry veterans, and hit the ground running, publishing influential independent games like Kentucky Route Zero, Outer Wilds, Neon White, and Stray.

The Hollywood Reporter was first to the news, covering the departure of senior executives at Annapurna, including company president Nathan Gary. Gary was one of those founding industry veterans of the interactive division, and, since 2021, the president of Annapurna Pictures overall. Gary is being replaced as president by Hector Sanchez, another founding member of Annapurna Interactive who recently returned from a stint at Epic.

Jason Schreier's report for Bloomberg is where things get interesting: According to Schreier's anonymous sources, Gary had been in negotiations with Megan Ellison to spin off Annapurna Interactive as its own company, separate from Annapurna Pictures. The mass resignation of Gary, his leadership team, and Annapurna Interactive's entire staff was in response to Ellison pulling out of these negotiations.

A spokesperson for Annapurna confirmed to Bloomberg that the negotiations had fallen through, and Megan Ellison provided the following statement:

"Our top priority is continuing to support our developer and publishing partners during this transition. We're committed to not only our existing slate of games but also expanding our presence in the interactive space as we continue to look for opportunities to take a more integrated approach to linear and interactive storytelling across film and TV, gaming, and theater."

This situation naturally seems to be wreaking havoc for Annapurna-published dev teams. Bloomberg reports that these developers have been scrambling to determine if their publishing partnerships are still valid and workable. Aura Triolo, animation lead on the Annapurna-published game Wanderstop, summed it up thusly on BlueSky: "*currently being published by Annapurna voice* haha." 

Notably, Alan Wake 2 developer Remedy's recently-announced partnership with Annapurna on the future of the Control series is unaffected by this development, as the deal was with parent company Annapurna Pictures and not the interactive subsidiary.

While details are still scarce, the staff exodus is an absolutely shocking detail, and likely unprecedented in the history of the industry. During a time of mass layoffs and contraction in games, the staff at Annapurna willingly left their jobs, seemingly with no notice given, over the prospect of the publisher remaining a subsidiary of Annapurna Pictures.