Mafia 3 Dev Opens New UK Office With Split/Second Director

Mafia 3 developer Hangar 13 is setting up a new studio office in Brighton, UK, to be headed by Split/Second director Nick Baynes. Baynes makes something of a reunion for the studio, as he worked at Black Rock Studio with Andy Wilson, who is now VP of development at Hangar 13.

The new team will work alongside the existing offices in California and the Czech Republic to collaborate on projects. For the time being, that current project is an unannounced AAA game for 2K. The announcement promises that the studio will be scaling up its various locations to keep pace with development.

The studio's sole credit, Mafia 3, received a mixed reception on GameSpot sister site Metacritic. The GameSpot Mafia 3 review was similarly lukewarm, hailing its excellent characterization and memorable story missions, but finding the core gameplay feeling dated and plagued with technical issues.

It was a big-budget freshman attempt, though, and managed to set records for 2K at the time. The developer was hit with layoffs earlier this year regardless, but given that it's currently on a project and announcing plans to ramp up during production, that may have simply been the sunsetting of one project and moving onto the next.