Just yesterday, at the time of this writing, before the Gamescom ONL 2025 craze started, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported that BioShock 4 developer Cloud Chamber was suffering layoffs and letting go of an unspecified number of staff. At the same time, we learned that former Diablo general manager, Rod Fergusson, would be taking over as the new studio head.
Today, Take-Two confirmed the cuts, but it was Schreier who added that the cuts would affect 80 members of Cloud Chamber's 250-person team. What's more, this new report from Schreier also reveals that BioShock 4 might not arrive until mid-to-late 2027.
An internal email from 2K president David Ismailer was shared with Bloomberg, in which Ismailer commented on the decision-making process behind the layoffs, but stopped short of directly saying how many people were impacted.
Ismailer wrote, "While we’re excited about the foundational gameplay elements of the project, we’ve made the decision with studio leadership to rework certain aspects that are core to a BioShock game, and in doing so are reducing the size of the development team to focus on this work and give the game more time in development."
"I know this is tough news for everyone. If your role is being affected, you'll hear from your manager or studio leadership today with details on severance, career services and support resources. There is no easy way to do this, but we hope to do whatever we can to support you through this. I want to thank each of you for your dedication and hard work."
According to the sources Schreier spoke to, BioShock 4 had an internal release target of "late 2026 or early 2027," but thanks to this restructuring, that timeline has been pushed back further, and now the game might not arrive until sometime in mid-to-late 2027, if it arrives in 2027 at all. And even if it does make a 2027 release window, that'll still mean the game was in development for over a decade.
Schreier's report goes on to discuss a number of the issues Cloud Chamber has faced in that time, including a challenge that we've seen other studios fail to overcome, which is attempting to build a big-budget, triple-A game while also building up a new studio at the same time.
It's unfortunate, to say the least, to see what has become of a game that, more than a decade ago, players were extremely excited to play. It's worth wondering whether BioShock 4 will have the same impact in 2027 that it would have had in, say, 2016, which would have been three years after BioShock Infinite's launch.
At this point, Take-Two has far too much invested to stop now, or at least it definitely feels like we're past the point where the game could just be killed without ever launching. Hopefully, Fergusson and the remaining team can pull something together.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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