‘Journey to the Savage Planet’ developers reform after Google shut them down

The employees of Typhoon Studios, the developer behind Journey to the Savage Planet, are reforming under the name Raccoon Logic. In an announcement, the team says that they are “to boldly go back to where they were before,” Google’s doomed acquisition of the company. Raccoon Logic has also revealed that the team has reacquired the rights to Savage Planet, enabling them to “hit the ground running on new adventures in the action adventure space.”

Typhoon was founded in 2017 by a group of Montreal-based game executives, including Far Cry 4 director Alex Hutchinson and Arkham Knight executive producer Reid Schneider. Their first title was Journey to the Savage Planet, a satirical sci-fi game for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch first released January 2020.

In 2019, Typhoon was acquired by Google as part of its push to acquire first-party content for its nascent Stadia streaming service. Sadly, in early 2021, Google’s notoriously impatient leadership decided to change strategy, closing its first party games division and firing the employees.

That decision would, in the short term, prove problematic, as Journey to the Savage Planet experienced some game-breaking bugs that Google had to race to work out how to fix. And left the future of both the Savage Planet franchise and the careers of those Typhoon staffers in the balance.

In a statement, Raccoon Logic says that it has received a “pivotal investment” from Tencent which will bankroll its as-yet unannounced debut project. Alex Hutchinson says that Tencent’s backing is a “huge boost, meaning we can do significant work on our own before we start talking to publishers.” Reid Schneider, meanwhile, thanks 505 Games, which published Savage Planet, and added that he’s planning to “build upon the Journey to the Savage Planet franchise in the future.”