Gaming veteran Chris Taylor leaves Wargaming to start independent studio (update)

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
November 22, 2016
Updated June 20, 2025
2 min

Chris Taylor, one of PC gaming’s well-known game designers, has left World of Tanks publisher Wargaming to strike out on his own.

The move is a surprise for a developer who had been out of the public eye for a while, but Taylor said it was time for him to move on, according to an exclusive chat with GamesBeat. But the departure raises some questions about what Taylor was working on before he left. Some players no doubt expected Taylor to produce a new version of Total Annihilation or some kind of real-time strategy game, as Taylor is known for. He’s still going to make games, but not for a big publisher.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.