Playdead co-founders “divorced” after protracted disagreements

More light has been cast on some behind the scenes drama which happened at Playdead, the studio behind both LIMBO and INSIDE. What was reported on earlier this year as co-founder Dino Patti departing the company with no further context given has been revealed to be what looks like quite a messy rift between Dino and the studio’s other founder; Arnt Jensen.

Posted yesterday in the Danish newspaper Børsen and picked up by NeoGaf user Lime, it transpires that there has been a fair amount of conflict between the two co-founders since 2015 when Patti seemingly started to get restless regarding the extended development cycles required for their games, saying, “The last couple of years it has been a bit too quiet at the office for my tastes. We make a new game every four or six years, so not much is going on” (improved translations by Reddit user livevil999).

INSIDE was a contender for many awards last year and won Best Independent Game at both the Game Critics Awards and the Game Awards. It was also voted Best Looking Game by Giant Bomb.

Beyond this an argument spurred about who owned the intellectual rights of the games and the two have only been communicating through lawyers since, with each attempting to gain control of the company. In November 2015 Arnt Jensen wrote, “After heavy consideration, I have to find other avenues to continue my creative activities through.”

Following this, Patti was able to remove Jensen as the executive from Playdead’s CVR registry despite Jensen’s lawyers disagreeing with this action and claiming he was only stepping down from his role as creative director, not as co-owner of the company. Messy enough already? It gets worse. Apparently the Danish Business Authority had to force Patti out, as the two co-founders continued to disagree, and he was paid 50 million DKK (About 45 million GBP) for his 49% share of the company. There’s been no comment from Arnt Jensen yet but Patti has come out saying he doesn’t believe the 50 million was enough and he’d still rather be co-director at Playdead.

What this could mean for future titles from Playdead really isn’t clear. Patti oversaw a company that grew from 8 full time staff to 25 over the course of it’s two titles although it seems that Jensen was the primary creative drive on both. Hopefully all this mess and misery can be channelled into the (presumably dark) tone for their next title.

Patti described it like a “divorce from a girlfriend”.