The Chinese Room is self-publishing next title

The successor to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture will be self-published by developer The Chinese Room.

We’re gearing up towards releasing info about our new game in the next couple of weeks,” the studio said on Twitter. With the bonus that because it’s not signed to a publisher, we can be pretty open about development.

Which raises the question – what’s the kind of stuff you want to know about how we make our games? Then we’ll do our best to make that as open as we can. The other cool thing is that we own the IP – so if you want t-shirts, special editions, vinyl, graphic novel, actual novel etc – let us know.”

Last October the developer’s studio head stepped back from her duties. Her open letter cited the struggles endured by working with a publisher – presumably Sony.

Working with a publisher made me extremely unhappy and very ill. In the end I didn’t even recognize myself anymore – I had turned from a joyful, fun-loving, creative, silly, funny person into a short-tempered, paranoid, unhappy, negative heap,” she said. So much of the stress that I experienced was caused by what I see as the desperately toxic relationship that I was in.

I look back at the way we were treated and it still makes me shake my head with disbelief. Big business and the creation of art have always been extremely uncomfortable bedfellows and making Rapture proved to be no exception for me. I don’t want to do this anymore- in fact I can’t do it. I want to surround myself with honest, open people whom I can trust.”

We're gearing up towards releasing info about our new game in the next couple of weeks.

— The Chinese Room (@ChineseRoom) February 15, 2016

With the bonus that because it's not signed to a publisher, we can be pretty open about development. Which raises the question…

— The Chinese Room (@ChineseRoom) February 15, 2016

What's the kind of stuff you want to know about how we make our games? Then we'll do our best to make that as open as we can…

— The Chinese Room (@ChineseRoom) February 15, 2016

The other cool thing is that we own the IP – so if you want t-shirts, special editions, vinyl, graphic novel, actual novel etc – let us know

— The Chinese Room (@ChineseRoom) February 15, 2016