4A Games has cleared the air on the situation between them and Reburn.
We’ll go ahead and share the relevant information from their website:
“In 2014, we, led by the original “four A’s” – the founders of 4A Games – formed “4A Games Limited” and created a new HQ in Malta with roughly 50 of our fellow team members. We have since grown and work to this day on Metro under contract with Deep Silver and Plaion.
We continued to work closely with our remaining Ukrainian colleagues at “4A Games Ukraine” on Metro Exodus through an outsource relationship led by us. Once Metro Exodus and its DLC was released, we created another Kyiv studio under 4A Games Limited and welcomed roughly 50 more of our colleagues to continue on with us, while 4A Games Ukraine continued to pursue their own project La Quimera, as a completely separate entity and recently renamed themselves Reburn. We wish them every success.”
As we had previously reported, Reburn revealed their rebranding, and that they were producing La Quimera with director Nicholas Winding Refn and writer E.J.A. Warren. 4A Games also came out with a quick message congratulating their former colleagues for their announcements.
What had been unclear until now was whether Reburn was the entirety of the 4A Games team still working in Kyiv, or if they still had some Kyiv-based employees working separately and remotely. Now we understand that they ended up making a separate Kyiv studio after all.
It’s easy to see why 4A and Reburn still have a cordial relationship, as those developers worked with each other through the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It seems easy to take for granted, but clearly, GSC Game World is not the only Ukrainian video game studio. And of course, other Ukrainian game studios also had to make their own moves in reaction to the ongoing war.
It speaks to the character of the people running GSC Game World, 4A Games, and Reburn, that they are all still going on in spite of the situation. We are hopeful that they can continue to make games, not only for gamers around the world to enjoy them, but as an expression of Ukrainian defiance and creative expression.
With everything that’s been said here, 4A still doesn’t seem to be ready to tell us more about the 4th Metro game quite yet. We obviously know about the challenges they are facing in development, but we hope it won’t have to wait for the next console generation to release.
