In 2012, Rod Fergusson was helping a team under 2K’s umbrella drag a troubled BioShock project across the finish line. Flash forward 13 years to 2025, and Rod Fergusson is… once again helping a team under 2K’s umbrella drag a troubled BioShock project across the finish line.
Fergusson’s installment as newfound BioShock franchise head comes after Bloomberg reported earlier this month that 2K had ousted Cloud Chamber studio head Kelley Gilmore and moved creative director Hogarth de la Plante to a publishing role following a failed internal review, which isolated BioShock 4’s narrative as a specific sticking point. BioShock 4, much like BioShock Infinite before it despite Ken Levine’s lack of involvement, has been in development for a long time – more than a decade – and Fergusson, in part due to his work whipping Infinite into ship shape, has gained a reputation in the industry as a “closer.”
“I’m deeply grateful for the work the studio has done so far, and I’m committed to building a BioShock game we’ll be proud of and that our players will love,” Fergusson said today on Bluesky.
In addition to this personnel shake up, 2K has also confirmed that there will be lay offs, though it did not specify how many people will be losing their jobs.
“Work on the next BioShock game has been underway for several years,” 2K Games president David Ismailer wrote in an internal memo published by Variety. “While we’re excited about the foundational gameplay elements of the project, we’ve made the decision with studio leadership to rework certain aspects that are core to a BioShock game, and in doing so are reducing the size of the development team to focus on this work and give the game more time in development.”
Fergusson returns to the loving, drill-armed embrace of the BioShock series after stints at Gears of War studio The Coalition and, more recently, Blizzard, where he oversaw the long-awaited release of Diablo IV. However, it’s worth noting that the game’s launch was preceded by a Washington Post report alleging pervasive crunch and departures due to dissatisfaction with how the game was coming together.
“People got frustrated because we all thought [Fergusson] was gonna come in and fix the game,” a former Blizzard employee told The Post at the time. “And when nothing happened, that’s when you started to see this massive turnover.”
Diablo IV received positive reviews upon release, and the general consensus is that it’s only gotten better since then. Fergusson left Blizzard earlier this month saying that he believed the teams working on Diablo are now “set up for success.”
BioShock Infinite’s final days were, of course, notoriously tumultuous, with Levine and his messy approach to creativity receiving most of the blame in the years since (and persisting to this day, reportedly). Still, in that case too, “mandatory crunch” was part of the schedule Fergusson put together, according to Jason Schreier’s book, Press Reset: Ruin And Recovery In The Video Game Industry. Ex-Irrational employees seem to agree, though, that Fergusson’s ability to schedule and, perhaps just as importantly, communicate with Levine were ultimately crucial to Infinite’s completion.
It remains to be seen whether or not BioShock 4 will once again necessitate the kind of painful overtime that has characterized other scattershot projects Fergusson’s been called in to wrangle. But it’d be hard to call this an auspicious new beginning.
“I recognize that today is a day of mixed emotions,” Ismailer continued in his memo to staff. “We’re excited to have Rod joining us, and are equally grateful to everyone at Cloud Chamber who has helped us get this far. These changes are rooted in 2K’s firm confidence in BioShock as one of the most beloved franchises, and our commitment to deliver the best game in franchise history.”
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