10 Video Game Studios Probably Founded Out Of Spite
3. Playtonic Games
Rareware was once one of the most trustworthy companies that any gamer could possibly support. You knew that Rare meant quality and for several years, working alongside Nintendo, their games were the kinds of things that sold systems: Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye, Banjo-Kazooie… the list goes on.
The Microsoft acquisition of Rare in 2002 was rather over-dramatically seen as the end of the studio, with Nintendo fans mourning the loss.
Certainly it can be said that Rare’s quality since developing for Xbox has been inconsistent at best, and being pulled away from the IPs that everyone knew them for (in particular Banjo-Kazooie) to work on Kinect games was a very concerning prospect.
In 2014 it was confirmed that people on the inside had felt very similarly, as half a dozen Rare employees announced that they had left their respective roles and formed a new studio in an attempt to bring that Rare magic back once more. Playtonic took to Kickstarter to reveal and fund their first game Yooka-Laylee, which was a love-letter to fans of Banjo-Kazooie and the 3D platforming genre.
Never a company short of sense of humour, Yooka-Laylee’s runtime is packed with little nods to Rare’s history and some suspect that the money-hungry villain Capital B’s need to suck up books is perhaps an allusion to Microsoft’s ill-gotten purchase of Rare.