THQ Nordic’s quest to own every software developer in existence continues apace with the announcement of yet another acquisition. This time they have purchased German game developer Piranha Bytes and their IPs. These include the Gothic series, the Risen franchise, and Elex, a sequel to which has been teased.
“There are situations in life where you think to yourself, ‘This feels right.’ Well, this is exactly one of them,” said Piranha Bytes’ Björn Pankratz. “After all, we want to continue to create great, memorable, and impactful games with as much creative freedom as possible, and with THQ Nordic we know we are now part of a family, which support us by all means in our efforts.”
THQ Nordic have also recently picked up Coffee Stain Studios, Warhorse Studios, and Koch Media. With so many studios you would assume they would have a lot of games in the works and you would be right. Last year the revealed they had 35 announced games in the pipeline with the most recent financial report stating that has grown to 48 games. In total there are 80 games in active development, one of which is coming from Metro developer 4A games.
THQ own a huge number of franchises now including Destroy All Humans, Timesplitters, Kingdoms of Amalur, Carmageddon, Red Faction, MX vs ATV, and Darksiders. They have cautioned that not all the IPs they have picked up will be getting a new game but many are hoping for a new Timesplitters, maybe something will turn up at E3.
In February this year THQ Nordic raised another $225 million in investments to buy other studios, I’m guessing Piranha Bytes barely dented that pile of cash so expect even more studios to be snapped up. THQ have had a bit of a rough time recently, they hosted a AMA on a site known for child pornography and racism and it went spectacularly wrong and forced their PR director to state that “I am not a white supremacist, nor into child pornography.”
In other acquisition news the Chinese giant Tencent has acquired Swedish game developer Sharkmob. Sharkmob was founded two years ago by a group of ex-Ubisoft developers led by the executive producer of The Division. They are currently working on a multiplayer PC and console game based on a “cult classic” franchise.
