Without so much as an official announcement, Epic Games has hired Jason West to join its game development team. West is well-known in the gaming industry as a co-founder of both Infinity Ward and Respawn Entertainment. The news was initially reported in a Twitter post by video game journalist Geoff Keighley.
Some game industry scoop: @EpicGames has quietly hired Jason West, @InfinityWard and @Respawn co-founder, to work on its game development efforts. From what I hear West, who lives in North Carolina, has been in the office for about a month. pic.twitter.com/nhR0zPq0mB
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) April 12, 2019
West has definitely been off everyone’s radar, at least before this surprise turn of events. In 2002, West co-founded Infinity Ward, the studio behind the Call of Duty franchise. In 2010, West left Infinity Ward to found Respawn Entertainment, which would go on to develop the Titanfall series and the breakaway Battle Royale hit, Apex Legends. As far as we know, West retired in 2013 and nobody had heard from him until Epic Games scooped him up to work on game development.
Patrick Shanley of the Hollywood Reporter confirmed Keighley’s story in the following tweet:
I've confirmed @geoffkeighley's great scoop this morning: Infinity Ward & Respawn co-founder Jason West has joined @EpicGames to work on game development https://t.co/pKjRy2iwrG
— Patrick Shanley (@pshanley88) April 12, 2019
According to the scoop from Keighley, West has been working in the Epic Games office for about a month now. Right now, we don’t know what he’s working on or if he’s working on any separate game development projects for Epic Games. In that regard, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Epic Games is the developer behind Fortnite, which is arguably the most popular online game today. Epic Games is also the studio behind the Gears of War franchise. Since it was founded in 1991, Epic Games has published some noteworthy titles, including Jack Jazzrabbit for MS-DOS. In light of some public backlash for its acquiring exclusive rights to a handful of highly-anticipated games over the past few months, this may be a move from Epic Games to develop its own titles in-house. In the ensuing community outrage after making Metro Exodus an Epic Games Store timed exclusive, a handful of users mentioned that if Epic Games wants exclusive rights, they should be making their own games instead of buying off developers.
What do you think about Epic Games secretive move to hire Jason West? There’s not a lot of information so far regarding the why’s and what’s of the hire, or of the projects they’re working on, but what do you hope Epic Games is working on right now alongside West? Let us know in the comments section below!
