A Kotaku report says 2K Games has removed Michael Condrey, known for his work on the Call of Duty series and Dead Space and as the co-founder of Sledgehammer Games, from his position as president of its 31st Union studio. The decision was made, according to the report, after the lacklustre reveal of the studio's upcoming free-to-play hero shooter Project Ethos.
Project Ethos seemed OK when we previewed it in October 2024, if not especially remarkable or original—although as the studio said at the time, it was still in early development. But the timing of the reveal was inauspicious, coming just over a month after another colorful hero shooter, Concord, met with disaster. It's not an exact parallel—Concord wasn't free to play, for one thing—but the hero shooter genre in general is very crowded, and the mere addition of "but with a twist" to a game that otherwise looks pretty indistinct isn't likely to get you very far. And while it's hardly a precise metric, I think it's fair to say that Project Ethos hasn't exactly generated a lot of buzz.
