Banjo-Kazooie Director Gregg Mayles Announces Departure from Rare After Over Three Decades

Rare veteran Gregg Mayles has taken to social media to confirm his departure from the company, noting in a recent post that he has officially wrapped up his last day of work at the studio. In his post, along with announcing his departure, Mayles also posted a lengthy poem as a message of farewell to Rare.

“Today was my last day at Rare,” posted Mayles. “Thanks to everyone who played and enjoyed any of the games I helped create while I was there. Also thanks to all the people that worked on the games alongside me.”

Mayles has worked with Rare for quite a bit of time, with his first work with the studio involving the game Solar Jetman from all the way back in 1990. Since then, he has served various roles on different projects.

He also went on to work as game director on some of the most critically-acclaimed and beloved games Rare has made, from Super NES title Donkey Kong Country, to Banjoe-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie on the Nintendo 64, and even Viva Pinata on the Xbox 360. Most recently, Mayles also worked as creative director on multiplayer pirate game Sea of Thieves.

Mayles’ departure from Rare also poses doubts on the future of the Banjo-Kazooie franchise, since he also worked on the last game that the franchise had seen – Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts on the Xbox 360. Earlier this year, composer of the first game in the franchise, Grant Kirkhope, had noted that he had “zero hope” for a new game in the franchise.

“I’ve said it before … but .. I have zero hope for another Banjo game, plus all you die hard fans would instantly hate it and slag it off no matter how good it was, it never works,” posted Kirkhope on social media back in January. Despite this, however, he also said that he would be open to working on the soundtrack for a potential new Banjo-Kazooie game.

The departure of Mayles was likely part of a larger restructuring taking place at Rare in light of the cancellation of Everwild back in July. At the time, reports had indicated that, along with the game itself being cancelled, there would also be some changes coming to how Rare has functioned.

Interestingly, back in September, former Rare executive producer Louise O’Connor saw a major promotion, being appointed as the chief of staff for Xbox Game Studios as a whole. O’Connor had worked on quite a few projects at Rare before the promotion, with her first credit with the company showing up on adult-comedy platforming title Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the Nintendo 64 all the way back in 2001.

In the meantime, Rare has also confirmed that it is changing up how it releases content for Sea of Thieves. In a lengthy post, the developer revealed that, going forward, seasonal content for the multiplayer pirate game will be released over the course of three months in distinct phases. Along with this, it has also announced that the Sea of Thieves Insider Programme will be coming back in 2026.