Rumors of David Jone’s departure from the Crackdown series swirled following the news that Cloudgine, the developer that provided the technology for the games unique multiplayer destruction. And when Microsoft Studios head Matt Booty refused to comment on the role of Cloudgine’s technology in Crackdown 3, the rumors kept growing.
“You know, I’m not going to get into the actual technical breakdown,” he told Polygon during E3 2018. “Let’s just say that we’ve got access to a great infrastructure, and the game’s got some great tech in it, and we’re going to put those two together in the way that makes the most sense.”
But according to Jones, the split means “not a lot basically.”
Jones claims that Cloudgine was available at the start of the game’s development, and helped create the cloud technology necessary to run the game’s destruction physics. And “now it’s just the technology stack, it’s pretty straightforward.”
As for the status of Reagent Games, which was founded by Jones and worked on Crackdown 3 before the company shuttered, he claims that their silence isn’t a bad omen.
“I suppose it’s because there just wasn’t much to talk about… I don’t think there’s anything secretive there,” he said. “Reagent was a very small number of people that came together to help out Crackdown, especially in the early days.”
In addition, Jones said that Reagent was more of a consultant company “there initially just to help get the project off the ground,” and Sumo Digital was always the main developer.
“Cloudgine was really there to help with technology and I was there really because I had been there for so long, so I was helping to find a direction for [Crackdown 3],” he said.
So why did Jones step away from Crackdown right before the game went gold?
“In an ideal world it could have been finished faster and I would have been able to see it through to the end,” he said. “But to be honest, I look back at other gaming franchises I’ve worked on and they’ve done really well without me being there as well, as long as the DNA is there and the right foundations are there.”
Crackdown 3 is set for release in February 2019.