It has been revealed that Gavin Raeburn, co-founder at Playground Games, is leaving the company after 12 years.
As announced via Windows Central, Microsoft highlighted that Raeburn is stepping away from his position as Studio Head at the Forza Horizon and Fable studio, with fellow co-founder Trevor Williams taking up the role immediately:
"After 12 years working on five award-winning Forza Horizon games, Gavin Raeburn is leaving Playground Games as Studio Director. A founding member of Playground Games, we thank Gav for his leadership and contributions to the Forza franchise and wish him all the best.
Co-founder Trevor Williams will transition from General Manager to Studio Head effective immediately, as the Playground Games team focuses on updates to Forza Horizon 5 and the development of Fable."
As mentioned, Raeburn has worked on all five Forza Horizon games to date, and previously was employed at racing developer Codemasters for 24 years, working on the likes of TOCA, Colin McRae, DIRT, GRID and much more.
There's no word on where Raeburn will end up next, but in any case, his loss is certainly a blow for Playground Games.
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
[source windowscentral.com]
Comments 8
Likely plans to spend more time with his money. I’m sure he got a big slice of that acquisition, but also was contractually obligated to stick around for x number of years/months.
Good for him. Hopefully he can spend sometime with his family and friends and figure out what he wants out of life after achieving so much in his industry.
It’s always interesting to read about the career paths of game developers. Sad to see him go but 36 years of making amazing racing games is an amazing accomplishment. I’m curious if he did anything before Codemasters or if that was his first software-related job.
Best of luck to him. Since the first Forza Horizon the series has been one of my favorites in gaming and Playground has established itself as one of my top 5 favorite devs.
This is a complete WIN-WIN. Thank you for making Forza Horizon such an incredible franchise and now they have some more liberty to shake things up a bit to keep it new and fresh.
As long as he didn't "salt-bae" the magic into the Horizon series to make it as fantastic as it is, I'm completely fine with him leaving. Now, if we could get a micro-machines DLC in the vein of Hot Wheels and Lego (Horizon 3 & 4 respectively), that would be swell.
He sounds like one of those lesser-known figures who was responsible for some of my favorite video games over the years. Very happy to have had him around. I imagine he's either retiring or setting up a new studio.
@Rural-Bandit
Yup. Interested to see how Fable turns out. Big departure from what Playground usually makes.
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