2K Games has fired 31st Union president Michael Condrey after the studio’s long-awaited online multiplayer game Project Ethos was revealed last fall to little fanfare or apparent player interest, according to two sources familiar with the studio. The project’s fate is now unclear, although 2K, which is publishing Borderlands 4 and Mafia: The Old Country later this year, says it remains “very committed” to both Project Ethos and the studio behind it.
Condrey, who previously co-founded Sledgehammer Games, was removed as studio head at 31st Union earlier this week on February 3, according to two sources, but 2K says he will continue advising the project. The leadership change comes as parent company Take-Two prepares to announce its quarterly earnings on February 6. The company, which is planning to release Grand Theft Auto 6 later this year, has a history of announcing project cancellations as write-downs in its quarterly results.
“We are grateful to Michael Condrey for the dedication, passion and work ethic it took to build an incredible team and shape the vision of 31st Union,” a 2K spokesperson for 2K told Kotaku in an email. “Michael will be transitioning his role in the short term to focus on advising on the future of Project ETHOS. We remain very committed to the forward path for Project ETHOS and the people and culture of the 31st Union studio.”
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31st Union had been working on Project Ethos for several years as part of what Kotaku understands to have been a challenging and rocky development cycle under Condrey’s leadership. The studio head joined after leaving Sledgehammer Games, the Call of Duty studio he co-founded with fellow Dead Space developer Glen Schofield, in 2018.
When the game was finally revealed last fall as a colorful extraction shooter that mixed a Fortnite aesthetic with hero-shooter-style gameplay, the reaction was disappointingly muted for a game that had been in production by a team of hundreds of developers across multiple studios (31st Union has a sister studio in Valencia, Spain). GameSpot’s preview said the shooter had potential but suffered from an “identity crisis.”
Project Ethos’ announcement and closed beta tests also came shortly after the high-profile collapse of Concord, Sony’s expensive first-party sci-fi hero shooter that was retroactively unreleased with full refunds to players less than two weeks after coming out. While some live-service projects have still found success, like the Overwatch-inspired Marvel Rivals, which is still one of the most played games across console and PC months after releasing, many more have struggled to gain any traction in the current hyper-competitive environment.
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