Former MachineGames developers establish Bad Yolk Games

Former MachineGames developers Michael Paixao and Joel Jonsson have announced the establishment of Bad Yolk, a new game studio based in Sweden.

Bad Yolk is made up of 10 senior AAA developers with a combined 90-plus years of experience and 14-plus AAA titles shipped, including Chronicles of Riddick, EVE Online, Gears of War, The Division, The Darkness, and more. The studio aims to “attract the best talent by offering a healthy and happy work-life balance, and thus, make the greatest, most creative and technically superior games possible.”

The studio is already underway on developing its first, as yet unannounced, new intellectual property.

“After years of working with some extremely talented people on some really great projects we felt it was time to branch out on our own to create a new kind of studio,” said Paixao in a press release. “Obviously high quality video games should be fun to play, but we also believe that they should be fun to make and that creativity thrives best in a healthy and balanced work environment, which is a central pillar of our corporate message and structure.”

Find short bios of Bad Yolk’s founders below.

Michael Paixao

Has worked in the games industry since 2007 and made the jump to Sweden in 2011. Started his Swedish game development trip at Ubisoft Massive in Malmö then later moved on up to MachineGames in Uppsala. After staying at machine games for just over four years it was time for a new challenge in life, working on games like The Division, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Old Blood, New Colossus and Doom it was time for this tried and true veteran to start his own studio, Bad Yolk Games.

Joel Jonsson

Fresh out of college Joel joined Machine Games 2013 as an Intern and not long after that landed a job as a Technical Artist and has worked alongside Mike on Wolfenstein: The New Order, Old Blood, New Colossus and Doom Joel felt it was the right thing to join Mike and help co-found Bad Yolk Games.