THQ Nordic have wolfed up but extra studios, immediately asserting they’ve purchased Bugbear Entertainment and Coffee Stain Studios. Bugbear are the smash-happy Finnish studio behind racing games together with Wreckfest and the primary three FlatOuts, whereas Coffee Stain made FPS tower defence collection Sanctum and wack ’em up Goat Simulator in addition to publishing games together with Deep Rock Galatic. It feels like they broadly plan to have the studios proceed to do their issues, with Bugbear making roughhousing racers and Coffee Stain each making and publishing games.
“THQ Nordic strongly [believe] in Bugbear’s competence in developing successful action racing games and [want] to make long term investments to support Bugbear’s future growth journey,” the media empire mentioned in immediately’s announcement. Keep on smashing, Bugbear. As properly as the event studio, THQ Nordic have picked up their mental property rights.
Bugbear are presently engaged on console variations of Wreckfest however certainly a Wreckfest 2 will observe.
“Coffee Stain will continue to operate as an independent group under the parent company, a highly complementary third leg in THQ Nordic,” they mentioned about their different acquisition in a separate announcement for buyers. That contains the IP rights to Sanctum, Goat Sim, and Coffee Stain’s upcoming ‘Factorio but first-person’ factory-building game Satisfactory, plus publishing rights to Deep Rock Galactic.
THQ Nordic are excited by Coffee Stain for the games they make, obvs, however they all the time fancy selecting up their connections and expertise.
“The plan is also to strengthen the publishing position in the Nordic market with A/AA developers and continue to evaluate minority investments in conjunction with publishing opportunities,” they mentioned. “In addition to this, THQ Nordic sees potential for synergies within distribution, marketing, know-how and IP development.”
This makes 4 massive acquisitions for THQ Nordic to this point this 12 months, having beforehand picked up cellular studio UsefulGames and Koch Media. The massive buy was Koch, which included publishers Deep Silver and their massive catalogue of games and studios purchased after American publishers THQ shut down, together with Saints Row and Metro. Yes, even THQ Nordic’s identify is an acquisition; they’re Austrian publishers previously often known as Nordic Games (it’s sophisticated), who picked up the THQ identify of their chapter fireplace sale. Oh, they usually’re planning a new TimeSplitters too. Goodness me, they’re slowing shopping for up the entire mid-tier games business.
