‘Has a Harrison fired you lately?’ Savage Planet devs taunt former Stadia boss Phil Harrison with GDC billboard
The ad seemingly refers to the closure of Typhoon Studios under Phil Harrison’s leadership at Stadia
A Revenge of the Savage Planet ad spotted at the Game Developers Conference this year appears to taunt former Stadia boss Phil Harrison.
The ad, which was spotted by VGC and is currently on display in San Francisco’s Union Square, shows a character with an oversized bald head.
“Has a Harrison fired you lately?” The ad reads. “You might be eligible for emotional support”. It also has a link to the Revenge of the Savage Planet website.
The character shown in the ad is identified as “Gunther Harrison, CEO of Alta Interglobal”, but those with knowledge of the Savage Planet series’ history will recognise it as a dig at Phil Harrison.
Harrison joined Google in 2018 as vice president and general manager of the division that would eventually develop and release its Stadia streaming platform.
In December 2019, Google acquired Typhoon Studios, the team behind Journey to the Savage Planet. The Montreal-based studio became part of the Stadia Games and Entertainment studio, joining a month before Journey to the Savage Planet was released.
Typhoon then started work on a sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet, but the disastrous launch of Stadia saw Google eventually closing all its internal Stadia game development teams in 2021, with Harrison saying he believed the move was “the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry”.
The core talent from Typhoon then set up a new studio in Montreal, reforming as Raccoon Logic and securing “a large initial investment” from Tencent.
Raccoon Logic was also able to retain the Journey to the Savage Planet IP, and officially announced the game’s sequel, Revenge of the Savage Planet, last August at Gamescom.
“In a future knocked off its axis by corporate greed and stupidity, you have been made redundant and abandoned on the far edge of space with little gear and no safety net,” the game’s synopsis reads. With its latest ad on display at GDC, it seems easy to guess where Raccoon Logic is taking its inspiration from.
The billboard also features a QR code, which, when scanned, leads to a website tracking how many people have scanned it. For every user who scans the code, Racoon Logic will donate money to the Canadian Mental Health Association.
In an interview with VGC last year, Raccoon Logic co-founder and creative director Alex Hutchinson explained the frustration he had working for Google, saying the studio ” wanted games that only worked in the cloud – which don’t exist”.
“They were asking us to deliver the kind of games built by 400 to 600 people, huge Marvel license games and Star Wars tie-ins. They said if you make the game and it’s great with 25 people, then we’ll let you hire 500 artists, which is not how it works. No one was talking the same language.”
Revenge of the Savage Planet is set to release on May 8, on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4 and PC. It will also be available on Xbox Game Pass on day one.
