2K Czech will see its main Prague office closed in the next few months. The studio is thought to be the development house for Mafia 3. “We have relocated and consolidated our 2K Czech team from our Prague facility to centralise resources in our location in Brno,” 2K told Eurogamer. “Additionally, we are transferring some development resources from Prague and Brno to 2K headquarters in Novato, CA.”
“This transition will both strengthen the integration of the 2K Czech team with our award winning development teams, and better align cross-functional business practices. As part of this realignment, we are adjusting our staffing levels, resulting in the elimination of some positions.”
Eurogamer also reported rumours that 10 developers from the Czech arm of 2K will be moving to California to continue their work. ‘Development resources’, ‘people’, that’s an abstraction with no negative connotations, eh?
We’ve heard next to nothing on Mafia 3 which is a pain because I want that series to return to the quality of the first game. Mafia was such an excellent GTA clone. It dropped the humour of GTA but had such a delicious style that it was hard not to love it. Mafia 2, on the other hand, had no life to it. Hopefully a third game will see the team return to what made the first so good.
Though, I can’t think of many games that improved by having their development team flown around the world and reallocated in this manner.