I mean, fuck. Fuck.

I just needed to get this out here (I just replayed Infinite).

It has been more than a year and I still can't believe they were shut down. I would have been so thrilled to see if they had a new game this E3. Amazingly talented team.

Fuck.

Does anyone know why they were shut down? Isn't Infinite the best selling entry? Plus it scored well with critics.

Check out the We Happy Few Kickstarter. Sure, it has nothing to do with Irrational Games, but it reminds me of Bioshock 1 in a few ways (the 60s vibe, the tone and the looting aspects) and it is really cool looking.

My understanding is that Levine wanted to move on and, well, he basically was Irrational Games.

Yea that team was a pretty great time while it lasted

The Bioshock trilogy were some solid games, but I can't say I was yearning for more.

http://kotaku.com/bioshock-studio-irrational-games-is-winding-down-all-1525186316

"While I'm deeply proud of what we've accomplished together, my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we've done before," Levine wrote. "To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers. In many ways, it will be a return to how we started: a small team making games for the core gaming audience."

Conspiracy theorists like me think it was financial and there was not enough profit to satisfy Take Two. The game did have a pretty long dev cycle and early footage showed many things completely different from the final product. It is a shame the game did not do better.

For additional info, Levine and Take-Two gave full severance to everybody at Irrational who left, and scheduled interviews at other companies if they didn't adopt the employees over to 2K proper.

Levine got a bunch of flak from his team during development of Infinite, so the game took a huge toll on him. I don't blame him for stepping away. I do blame him for dissolving the entire team instead of just stepping down. Kind of a dick move. But hey, we're getting like three different games made by different bunches of Irrational members now (I believe two Kickstarter games and that new Levine project). It's something!

They haven't been shut down. They're just downsized to a smaller team. They'll probably work on some smaller titles for a while, and if those are successful T2 might let them re-up and make another AAA project.

Reading what Levine said in interviews before Infinite released and what team members said afterwards, I doubt it was a case of Irrational simply being closed by 2k.  He really did not seem to like being the "boss" on a big project, he even said he wasn't that good at it.  He's extremely demanding on himself and others and it sounds like running such a large studio took its toll.  I think he wanted to step away from that.  I do, however, believe that 2k had no intentions of keeping Irrational going if Levine left.