It’s been suggested that several high-level developers and staff members have recently left PlatinumGames. PlatinumGames is a studio best known for its action games. The most recent game to come from the studio was Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, which was released back in 2023.
Many gamers were shocked when, near the end of 2023, Hideki Kamiya announced his departure from PlatinumGames after a 15-year tenure. Kamiya was one of the founders of the studio, alongside Shinji Mikami, Atsushi Inaba, and Tatsuya Minami. It seems like Hideki Kamiya isn’t the only one leaving Platinum Games, as more developers have seemingly left the company last month.
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As detailed by PlatinumGamesFanboy on the r/PlatinumGamesInc subreddit, a lot of veterans of the studio made some changes to their social media profiles. Specifically, Kenji Saito, Takahisa Taura, Masaki Yamanaka, and Abebe Tinari have removed mentions of PlatinumGames from their Twitter handles. Saito, in particular, used to have “PlatinumGames” set as his location, but it has now been left blank. Abebe Tinari, the director of Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, recently confirmed that he had moved out of Japan entirely.
High-Level Platinum Games Developers May Have Left Last Month
All of these staff members worked on some of PlatinumGames’ most notable titles. Saito was the director of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Transformers: Devastation, Taura was the director of 2019’s Astral Chain, and Yamanaka was a designer and the director of Anarchy Reigns. JP Kellams, a former staff member at PlatinumGames, recently commented on Twitter about the situation, noting how “sometimes Platinum does lose its luster,” and that many of the people he previously worked with likely don’t work at the studio anymore. No official confirmation of these departures has been stated at this time, so this is mainly just speculation and rumors for now.
Kamiya explained that he left PlatinumGames due to how he felt that the company was going in a direction that was different from his viewpoint as a developer. Following his departure from PlatinumGames and a required year of not working on any new titles, Kamiya recently announced Clovers, a new studio under Capcom. Kamiya’s first new post-Platinum project was also announced at The Game Awards 2024, a long awaited sequel to Okami, joining up with many former members of Clover Studio to make it happen as well.
