The last few months have been difficult ones for Crytek, but last week there was good news for the staff at the big company, as they announced that they had secured fresh investment to help them complete their transformation into a digital publisher. All seemed to be returning back to normal, but today reveals a new twist in the tale.
Koch Media have now acquired the rights to the Homefront IP from Crytek, who had originally taken it on during the liquidation of THQ in 2013, and this includes Homefront: The Revolution, which was announced back in June. Koch Media were already set to publish the game under their Deep Silver brand, but they have now brought it fully in house.
What’s interesting about this is that they are also founding a new studio to take on development, called Deep Silver Dambuster Studios. Based in Nottingham, and with the prior rumours of staff walkouts and the departure of key personnel from Crytek UK – who are also Nottingham-based – it seems that this new studio will feature some of the same developers that have been working on the game up until this point.
UPDATE: VG247 and others are reporting that they have seen documents that confirm that Hasit Zala, the Game Director on Homefront: The Revolution while he was at Crytek UK and a veteran of the studio’s Free Radical years, is now the Studio Director at Dambuster Studios. It lends further credence to notion that Dambuster will be primarily made up of former Crytek UK staff.
As part of the statement released today, CEO of Koch Media, Dr. Klemens Kundratitz said, “We are thrilled to see another great IP joining the Deep Silver universe. We strongly believe in the potential of Homefront: The Revolution and trust in the new team to continue the path we have been walking in the last years.”
How big a role this played in Crytek’s solution to their finances we may never truly know, but it will be interesting to see if stories emerge of how Dambuster was founded and the efforts made behind the scenes to help Homefront find another new home.
Source: press release
Jim Hargreaves
It’s great to see Koch setting up a new studio in UK. I just hope Dambuster can deliver on Crytek’s promises.
gazzagb
Because they’ve bought the IP, does that mean they now also own all the code and assets for Homefront 2 too? Or have they literally just bought the rights to calling a game ‘Homefront 2’. Hopefully it’s the former as the game was looking quite good already, and if they can migrate over the existing staff that will be even better.
Tuffcub
They would have bought everything, including Homefront 1 and the unfinished code for the new game.
TSBonyman
Sounds like they’ve worked out a solution to some of their recent woes, although i’m more interested in hearing about the Timesplitters project than Homefront 2.