After four years of working at The Initiative it appears that the director of the studio’s freshman title, Perfect Dark, has left.
First reported by VGC, it was noticed that a ResetEra user by the name of Klobrille mentioned that the game’s Director Dan Neuburger updated his work experience on LinkedIn showing that his time at The Initiative ended last month in February. No official statement from him or the studio has been made as of yet.
In the past, Neuburger was one of the directors for both Tomb Raider (2013), as well as Rise of the Tomb Raider at Crystal Dynamics. Crystal was recently announced last year that they will be lending a major hand to the development of Perfect Dark and it wouldn’t be surprising that Neuburger’s lengthy history with the studio had something to do with that.
This isn’t the first significant member of The Initiative that has left the studio. Design Director Drew Murray left the studio last year due to personal reasons and has returned to his former studio at Insomniac Games where he was the game director for Sunset Overdrive.
Perfect Dark was first revealed back in 2020 at The Game Awards and since then there has been little news. Xbox head Phil Spencer defined The Initiative as the first “AAAA” development team when the studio was announced back in 2018 at E3.
