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‘Epic Didn’t Really Know What to Do With the Franchise,’ Cliff Bleszinski on the Gears of War Sale to Xbox

While Gears of War has always been connected to the Xbox brand, the series was created by Epic Games as an exclusive. And though the series eventually found its way to Microsoft's first-party portfolio, lead designer Cliff Bleszinski shared his thoughts on the sale.

IGN sat down with Bleszinski for a new episode of Unfiltered and found out how the game director felt when it was announced that Epic Games would sell the franchise to Microsoft in 2014. This was two years after Bleszinski left Epic Games in 2012.

"I honestly think once Lee Perry [Gameplay Designer, Gears of War 2], myself, and Rod Ferguson [Producer, Gears of War] left, I believe that Epic didn't really know what to do with the franchise," Bleszinski tells IGN. He further believes the sale helped Epic fund its future ventures and growth.

"They hadn't shipped a game in a while. The [Unreal] engine was doing rather well, but they were growing and they probably needed the income even though they really didn't know what to do with the future of the franchise."

Bleszinski also says that following the sale, the only person to call him about it was Xbox's Phil Spencer. "As much as I loved Tim and Mark [Rein, VP of Epic Games] and we're still in touch, but when the IP was sold to Microsoft the only phone call I got was from Phil Spencer. Right? And that's Phil. Phil is, as they say, a gentleman and a scholar."

After Microsoft acquired the Gears of War franchise from Epic, the development of the games was handed over to The Coalition, an Xbox Game Studios team in Canada. Under The Coalition, the team developed Gears of War 4 and Gears 5.

Epic Games has since charted a new path in the post-Gears of War years, primarily with the global hit Fortnite. Epic is also continuing to develop the next-gen game engine, Unreal Engine 5, which coincidentally The Coalition is using for its next game.

Bleszinski did share his thoughts on the new games on Unfiltered as well, saying that he doesn't feel the new games have the same "heart" the original trilogy has.

"I will say about the latest ones is that at the end of one of the recent ones, they made the player choose between which character lives and dies. And I'm like, 'Dude, really?' We committed to Dom dying. We committed to Maria being killed.'" The Coalition may have painted itself into a narrative "corner" according to Bleszinski.

For more on Bleszinski and his new book, 'Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games," check out IGN Unfiltered.

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Cliff Bleszinski on Doom Co-Creator John Romero: ‘I Saw Him as My Enemy’

Video game industry veteran Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski has admitted he had an intense rivalry with id Software co-founder and Doom co-creator John Romero in the 1990s when he was working at Epic Games.

Speaking to IGN, Bleszinski said that, as the co-designer of Unreal, he was "gunning to try and defeat" id Software's Quake and its lead designer and director Romero.

"I saw Romero as my enemy," he said. "He was dating Stevie Case at the time, who's in Playboy and whatnot, and I was like, 'I'm going to take that guy down'. It goes back to, again, the whole, I had nothing and I wanted it, you had everything and you flaunted it. So we were gunning to try and defeat [Quake]."

"I saw Romero as my enemy. He was dating Stevie Case at the time, who's in Playboy and whatnot, and I was like, 'I'm going to take that guy down'.

He continued: "Ramiro was one of the first rockstar game designers and I looked at his playbook and I tried to emulate it as much as possible. He had his signature long hair, he has his painted nails, 'It's rock and roll, mate,' and then I was doing the whole blonde hair, the red hair, changing my looks up a lot because [of] being a pop culture nut."

Bleszinski said Epic utilized the concept of "counter programming" at the time, where they'd consider what id Software was doing, then do the opposite to one-up them and appeal to a different audience.

"Yes, we were making a multiplayer first person shooter, but we wanted to have bright colours, not make it kind of dark and dreary," he said. "Same thing with the first Unreal. Unreal had the bright coloured lighting, it had sky castles, it had all these beautiful environments, whereas Quake was deep, dark, Trent Resner fuelled, Cthulhu dungeons."

Though he's now good friends with Romero, Bleszinski admitted he went too far with some elements of the rivalry. Romero founded Ion Storm after leaving id Software in 1996, but the studio didn't have much success and shut down in 2005.

"It really is a classic Hollywood kind of story, rooting for Romero to fall," Bleszinski said. "I wound up recruiting a whole bunch of really, really talented people at Epic Games [when Ion Storm shut down], but it's one of those things that, in hindsight, it was really dickish to have the schadenfreude of seeing somebody else's studio fail.

"Then, again, the matrix God was sending me another signal, like, 'well now your studio's going to fail. You're going to see how it f**king feels'," he added.

Bleszinski co-founded Boss Key Productions in 2014 and the studio began work on Lawbreakers, a PC arena shooter intended to rival Overwatch. Though he again deployed his "counter programming" strategy in an attempt to take down Blizzard's game, Lawbreakers did not take off and Boss Key Productions shut down in 2018.

Romero, on the other hand, is currently creating a new first person shooter in (ironically) Unreal Engine 5, and is also developing Sigil 2 (which will run on Doom 2’s engine) at his studio Romero Games.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.