Playdead Co-founder was paid $7.2 million to leave the company
The authors of Limbo and INSIDE did not divide the company. As a result of the conflict, one of the founders of the company was paid $7.2 million to leave.
In July 2016, Dino Patti, one of the two founders of the studio, left Playdead.
On January 16, 2017, the Danish financial publication Borsen (an analogue of the Russian Vedomosti) published a publication shedding light on how this departure took place.
In 2015, a protracted conflict began between the developers of Limbo and INSIDE. It grew into an active phase when the second co-founder Arnt Jensen publicly stated that he had to find another way to continue working.
Patti decided that Arnt had decided to leave and stripped him of his CEO position in the company’s registration number. Arnt’s lawyers did not agree with this, saying that he refused the post of creative director, but not the post of co-owner of the company.
As a result, the Danish Agency for Entrepreneurship forced Patti to leave the company himself. He was paid about $7.2 million for 49% of Playdead.
Patti believes that the company is worth more, the entire amount was not compensated to him. Moreover, according to him, he would have exchanged this money at any moment to become a co-head of the company again.
Arnt and Patti have worked at Playdead together for 10 years. In 2016, the company released the platformer INSIDE, which became one of the central releases of last year. The game received awards at The Game Awards 2016, Game Critics Awards, Golden Joystick Awards and Unity Awards 2016. The number of owners of the game on Steam is about 300 thousand.
