The employees of Typhoon Studios, the developer of Journey to the Savage Planet, reform themselves under the name Raccoon Logic. In an announcement, the team said they should “boldly go back to where they were,” the doomed acquisition of the company by Google. Raccoon Logic also announced that the team has repurchased the rights to Savage Planet to enable them to “start new adventures in the action-adventure realm”.
Typhoon was founded in 2017 by a group of Montreal-based game managers including Far Cry 4 director Alex Hutchinson and Arkham Knight executive producer Reid Schneider. Her first title was Journey to the Savage Planet, a satirical sci-fi game for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch that was first released in January 2020.
In 2019, Typhoon was acquired by Google to acquire first-party content for its emerging streaming service Stadia. Unfortunately, in early 2021, Google’s notoriously impatient leadership decided to change strategy, shut down their first party games department and lay off the staff.
That decision would prove problematic in the short term as it encountered some groundbreaking bugs on Journey to the Savage Planet that Google had to work to resolve. And left the future of both the Savage Planet franchise and the careers of these Typhoon employees in the balance.
In a statement, Raccoon Logic says it has received a “critical investment” from Tencent that will fund its as-yet-unannounced debut project. Alex Hutchinson says Tencent’s support is “a big boost, which means we can do meaningful work on our own before we talk to the publishers.” Meanwhile, Reid Schneider thanks 505 Games for releasing Savage Planet, adding that he plans to “build on the Journey to the Savage Planet franchise in the future.”
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