{"id":837115,"date":"2026-09-05T07:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T07:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/837115\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T07:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T07:54:11","slug":"tim-schafer-calls-double-fine-leaving-xbox-a-creative-awakening-ashas-not-going-to-shoot-my-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/837115\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Schafer Calls Double Fine Leaving Xbox A ‘Creative Awakening’: ‘Asha\u2019s Not Going To Shoot My Dog’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this summer, Double Fine was at risk of being closed. Now it\u2019s independent again and plowing forward with a $400,000 Kickstarter for its next game jam<\/a>. If studio founder Tim Schafer is tired of the fight, he\u2019s not showing it. He opened up about leaving Xbox and laid out what\u2019s ahead for the Psychonauts 2 maker in a new interview with Bloomberg<\/a>. \u201cSome people said: \u2019I\u2019m checking out, this is one too many battles for me.\u2019 But for the rest of us, it\u2019s like a creative awakening,\u201d Schafer said.<\/p>\n

Double Fine, which released the critically acclaimed but poorly selling Keeper in 2025<\/a>\u00a0and the less well-received pottery party game Kiln earlier this year<\/a>, didn\u2019t escape Xbox\u2019s current reset completely unscathed. It had to lay off 23 people, and Schafer says some initial runway funding from Microsoft won\u2019t last long. But the studio is once again independent and able to chart its own course. That brings with it a tremendous amount of risk, but also a clarifying new level of creative urgency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe games industry is full of terrible things, and I can\u2019t change most of them,\u201d Schafer said. \u201cIt\u2019s like I\u2019m a captain of a little fishing boat. And it\u2019s like worrying about whether the ocean is fair. Not much I can do about it. Just keep this little boat afloat, keep trying to see if that\u2019s a reef, or is that a bunch of fish? Is that money over there?\u201d<\/p>\n

He said being part of Xbox worked for a while, but when new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma came in to replace Phil Spencer, it was clear things were going to change. \u201cWe had a mutually beneficial mission, which is just to put great games on Game Pass, and then their mission changed,\u201d Schafer said. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine any amount of profitability\u2014unless we had a breakout, Minecraft hit that year\u2014would\u2019ve saved us.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the writing may have been on the wall, Xbox\u2019s decision to divest from Double Fine was an abrupt one. Bloomberg reports that as late as the beginning of the summer, there was still no clarity on what Sharma was planning. Schafer found it hard to get a straight answer from anyone at Xbox, while some stopped responding to his messages altogether. Instead of being bitter, the veteran developer treated it as a moment to rally. He\u2019s currently at PAX West this weekend to help out at Double Fine\u2019s booth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one puts Double Fine out of business except for me,\u201d is one way Schafer explained it to Bloomberg. \u201cAsha\u2019s not going to shoot my dog. I\u2019m going to shoot it. But I\u2019m not going to shoot it because it\u2019s going to do great. A lot of people want to walk the dog.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this summer, Double Fine was at risk of being closed. Now it\u2019s independent again and plowing forward…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[129246,335873,74,1298],"class_list":["post-837115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-double-fine","tag-psychonauts-2","tag-technology","tag-xbox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}