"We chose the worst time in history" – Harvey Smith on starting his own studio after Arkane

"We chose the worst time in history" – Harvey Smith on starting his own studio after Arkane Black Pony Immersive has been built to create the games that Smith and his Dishonored and Deus Ex colleagues do best Microsoft's closure of Arkane Austin in May 2024 left 96 developers out of work – among them studio head Harvey Smith, whose storied career spans Deus Ex, Dishonored, and Prey. Now, after a two-year quiet period, Smith is ready to reveal his next venture: Black Pony Immersive, a new studio co-founded with former Arkane colleague Ben Horne. (Horne himself went to Meta-owned Twisted Pixel after Arkane's closure, where he worked on Marvel's Deadpool VR, but left in August 2025, a few months before it too was closed down by its parent company.) Not everyone at Black Pony is an Arkane veteran. "But many of these people, if you go on my Instagram, you'll find pictures of us hanging out, after those last days at Arkane." Among the long-time collaborators on staff at Black Pony are Ricardo Bare, Smith's creative partner since they first worked together as designers on Deus Ex, and Monte Martinez, formerly of Ion Storm, 2K Marin, and WolfEye, who Smith calls "the secret weapon of the immersive-sim world".