Amnesia dev Chinese Room has 'gone dark'

Independent developer The Chinese Room has let go all of its staff and is 'going dark' for a while.

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The Chinese Room, the independent developer best known for hits like Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, is taking a break from games development.

Amnesia dev Chinese Room has 'gone dark' | TweakTown.com

"We're going dark for the next few months," creative director Dan Pinchbeck said in an eye-opening blog post. Mr. Pinchbeck says the decision to steer the dev's figurative ship towards the docks and take a long-deserved break was caused by a jolting health scare, which caused him to re-think The Chinese Room's toll on his life. "To cut a long story short, the situation - between financial pressures, trying to keep the lights on for the employed team, the stress of end-of-development, health issues - just wasn't a tenable thing anymore. It was time to take a break, recharge, recover and have a good think about the future," he said.

The development team has since been let go, but Mr. Pinchbeck affirms "this is a pause, not an end." The studio's employee profile page has been taken down. The creative director says that he's working on a new game called the 13th Interior along with composer Jessica Curry and game designer Andrew Crenshaw, but there's no longer a full development team on the project.

"Is it the end of The Chinese Room? No, I don't think so. But it's the end of a chapter, and we hope you can all be patient with us whilst we figure out what happens next," Mr. Pinchbeck concluded.

NEWS SOURCE:thechineseroom.co.uk

Derek joined the TweakTown team in 2015 and has since reviewed and played 1000s of hours of new games. Derek is absorbed with the intersection of technology and gaming, and is always looking forward to new advancements. With over six years in games journalism under his belt, Derek aims to further engage the gaming sector while taking a peek under the tech that powers it. He hopes to one day explore the stars in No Man's Sky with the magic of VR.

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