Mon, Oct 22, 2012 | 14:49 BST

Darksiders 2 studio co-founder jumps ship after 7 years

Darksiders 2 developer Vigil Games has lost another key developer, the studio’s co-founder Joe Madureira, after seven years of service.

Gamespot reports that Madureira made the following announcement on his Facebook page:

“I’m afraid the time has come for me to move on to new adventures. I could not be more proud of what we achieved, or the awesome people who helped build up this studio. I can safely say Vigil’s future is in very good hands, so expect only awesomeness down the road. This feels surreal…I miss the place already.”

When asked by Facebook users what he planned on doing next, he replied that he fancied, “banging out a bunch of comics”, but didn’t elaborate further.

Madureira joins a slew of high profile departures recently such as Peter Molyneux leaving Microsoft, Cliff Bleszinski and Rod Fergusson leaving Epic Games and many more.

What’s your take on the timing of these departures? Let us know below.

6 comments

Mike W
22/10/12, 3:02 pm

“These are dark times”, (Zobek’s voice in castlevania: LOS) I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. But more power to them, to express their talents in different fields.

Da Man
22/10/12, 3:43 pm

So basically artstyle, the sole reason for playing it is no longer present.

Strange Sultan
22/10/12, 4:03 pm

HEY HEY HEY !!! are you kidding me ?! what about Darksiders ??!!

The_Red
22/10/12, 9:16 pm

This is… this is bad. Vigil was starting to become a rather great studio. While neither of DarkSiders games were superb, they were nonetheless fun game with many decent aspects and a lot of time and energy was put into creating that mythology.
While this doesn’t mean the death of Vigil but Joe Mad was one of the main reason I was interested in their games.

alimokrane
22/10/12, 11:32 pm

This type of news makes me sick! I just hate how everyone interprets the departure of ONE person (head of studio or not) as the apocalypse! Games are made by teams of hundreds of people and the credit should be given to everyone not just a single person and them leaving is not the end of the world….

The_Red
23/10/12, 7:33 am

@5
There’s just one problem about what you said: Joe Mad is not just one random person or an exec. He was the art director and creator of DarkSiders look, themes and many other things. Heck, the whole studio and their project got attention because of his involvement. Of course I know departure of one person isn’t really the apocalypse or death of a studio but with such bad rumors surrounding DarkSiders 2′s performance and Vigil in general…