V1 Interactive Shuts Down

Yet another studio is shutting down this year, although this is one you probably won’t notice as much as the shutdown of Google’s first-party developers: V1 Interactive, the folks behind the weird FPS/RTS hybrid Disintegration, is shutting down after five years.

Despite only putting out one game (Which has mixed reviews on Steam, and was never very attention-grabbing), V1 was noteworthy for being the brainchild of one Marcus Lehto, the co-creator of the Halo universe and the self-proclaimed “Father of the Master Chef”. This pedigree wasn’t enough to actually earn his game high marks, though, and most reviewers of the title — which came out earlier last year to not much fanfare — called the game an ambitious failure at best. A good idea executed poorly. Not that Marcus Lehto would agree, going on this latest tweet:
 

Playing @Disintegration tonight before the servers shut down with some dedicated community that I love. Damn, this game never got a fair shake IMO. Makes me really sad, but still proud of what we created.

In any case, this means that their employees will be out of work, but according to the studio itself, they’ve been transparent about the state of affairs and the employees had months to settle affairs and find new jobs — which puts them leagues above Google Stadia and Activision Blizzard, which will praise their devs one day and then give them their termination notices the next. Like some kind of psychopaths.

In any case, while this is sad news for the employees affected, and those who are fans of Marcus Lehto’s work… the studio didn’t really put out enough content to warrant much further examination or mourning. We’ll be sad for the lost potental, but I think it’s safe to say that in a few weeks, we’ll have forgotten Disintegration — and V1 Interactive — ever existed at all.

Sad, but them’s the kicks.