Quoth the Jason, “The bloodletting begins.”
Greg Rice, Double Fine’s VP of business development and arguably their second most recognizable face, has left the company for a “new position elsewhere in the game industry.” A tweet string makes it pretty clear there is no bad blood behind the departure, though it seems somewhat prudent to speculate if the recent Microsoft acquisition would have changed his responsibilities within the company. And that’s what we do. Speculate.
Source: Gamasutra
Greg Rice has been offered a great position at Playstation working with indies, which is something which his time with Double Fine Presents has neatly prepared him for, and I think all this is, is that he found something in that that he might enjoy as much as being a part of DF, and preferred to pursue that role than what would have probably been less of a publishy role at DF.
I know Greg seemed to loom so large in DF, but I believe he's only been there for about half of DF's life. DF existed before him, and it'll exist after him. It'll be hard to imagine DF without him because he's always been there since they've had that film crew, but everything I've heard suggests there's fun announcements to come in the new year, and lots of thing to look forward to.
Here I just hope DF will continue to exist and make a successful big game (Psychonauts 2 hopefully would be that one) and Microsoft will never shut them down.
And then Tim will leave to set up another independent studio with all the money, so he has control of his characters again X-)