Dino Patti sheds more light on why he left Playdead

In July 2016 fans of the indie development studio Playdead were left reeling when co-founder Dino Patti announced he would be leaving the studio. Dino founded the studio with Arnt Jansen in 2006 and in his 10 years with the company the studio released the hit indie titles: Limbo (2006) and Inside (2016). However in a tweet at the time he announced that he was leaving “to seek new challenges“.

Following almost 10 incredible years building Playdead from an idea to two dents in the games industry, I’m leaving to seek new challenges.

— Dino Patti (@DinoPatti) July 19, 2016

It has now been almost a year since Dino left and in a recent interview with Eurogamer at Gamelap 2017 in Barcelona Dino shed some more light on the situation. Dino touched on why he jumped ship and his new title Somerville from his new studio, Jumpship — insert the shade button noise here.

Up until this point in time Patti had remained fairly silent about his departure but it has become clear that a falling out of some type must have occurred as he says.

“There was some kind of fallout. It is kind of delicate. It’s also combined with other personal reasons. I really like Playdead, it’s something that’s deep in my heart. I love the people there, they’re still my friends. I’m on speaking terms with 98 per cent of the people there…

Selling his portion of shares in the business to Jansen for a rumoured $US7.2 million, according to Kotaku, Patti made the decision to walk away without any further drama at the time. Patti went on to say.

“For me it was just time to do something else. I found a way to do it in a way where I could do whatever I wanted afterwards.”

Now working with ex-MMA fighter Chris Olsen, better known for his animation on Avengers 2 and Lego Batman, the pair are yet to give us a release date for Somerville. However with hits like Limbo and Inside under his belt Patti has proven his commitment to quality titles in his own timeline adding.

“It’s so easy to destroy original ideas. There’s a lot of lack of quality in games – a lot of games value being done on time before they value quality. But it’s really important to have it.”