Garth DeAngelis, senior producer at Firaxis,
announced on Twitter this Monday that he was leaving the company after 14 years. Given that he helped bring XCOM back in its new form, this might end up being bad news for fans holding out for XCOM 3, though
lead designer for the games, Jake Solomon, still seems to be working there, and he (among others)
posted a farewell to DeAngelis, stating that XCOM (and Midnight Suns) couldn't have happened without him.
Midnight Suns is the Marvel turn-based strategy game that Firaxis released on the 1st of December, and while it received some critical success, user scores are mixed, usually citing the egregious microtransaction cash-shop (similar to the ones in 2K's other published titles, such as their NBA series) or the poor level of optimization and bugs. The game launched on PC and current-gen consoles, but I don't believe the date for the planned Switch/Xbone/PS4 release has been announced. After only a month, the game is already on sale for 33% off, which, given the Steamchart data on number of peak/concurrent players, likely points to a poor financial performance overall, echoing Square Enix's disappointing sales for their Avengers game a couple years ago, and what feels like a general growing malaise regarding Marvel and Disney IPs as a whole (might just be me reading into it, though, so take it with a grain of salt.)
While it may have just been DeAngelis riding out this project and making sure it shipped before taking a previously-planned leave, I wouldn't be surprised if he was privy to some writing on the wall after the reception and sales of XCOM: Chimera Squad and then Midnight Suns and with 2K's increasingly money-grubbing nature. I won't be
too alarmist and say XCOM is dead, but I would keep an eye out to see if Jake Solomon suddenly jumps ship. Not a great start to the year for Firaxis, it feels like.