Darksiders and Darksiders 2 Creative Director Joe Madureira has announced his departure from developer Vigil Games. In addition to serving as CD on the company's only retail releases, Madureira (or Joe Mad, as he liked to be called) also co-founded Vigil Games back in 2005.

While Madureira wouldn't say what endeavors he hopes to pursue post-Vigil, he did tease more details about his "next big thing" are right around the corner.

Madureira further fleshed out his goodbyes in posts on Twitter and Facebook in which he had nothing but kind words to say about his colleagues at Vigil. Like Cliff Bleszinski and Rod Fergusson, Madureira's departure will call into question the workplace environment, but there seems to be no bad blood between the co-founder and his former company.

In addition to his work at Vigil Games, Madureira is also known for his extensive work in the comic book world, where he served as an artist on several Marvel comics, most of them starring the X-Men. There's no question that Madureira's distinct visual style helped Darksiders stand out above the rest.

In the meantime (a.k.a. before he announces said next big thing), Madureira says he hopes to turn his focus to "banging out a bunch of comics," which should make fans of his work extremely happy. But unfortunately, as far as Darksiders goes, he will no longer be involved with the franchise.

While major departures of this nature suggest things aren't running smoothly at a developer, that doesn’t appear to be the case with THQ partner Vigil Games. The highly anticipated Darksiders 2 — while somewhat of a departure from the first game's formula — was met with mostly positive reviews, and was able to secure the top spot for August sales.

At the moment, Vigil is busy teasing some of Darksiders 2's forthcoming DLC, but we imagine it's only a matter of time before they start teasing Darksiders 3 (which will hopefully feature a little co-op).

Whatever Madureira ends up doing we wish him all the best, and we hope that he can use his creativity to fuel more successful projects like Darksiders.

Are you still looking forward to the next Darksiders? What will Vigil need to improve for Darksiders 3 to be a success?

Source: Joe Madureira