Business acquisitions in the video game industry continued in October, with the latest news involving popular video game developer Rockstar Games and their expanding roster of UK-based video game development studios.
Rockstar Games has reportedly acquired the Dundee based video game developer Ruffian Games, and rebranded the studio to Rockstar Dundee. The deal is thought to have been finalised around October 1st, but was done quietly, without anyone realizing until more recently.
Ruffian Games has been the driving force behind games such as Crackdown 2, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Kinect Star Wars.
The initial news of the acquisition, and rebranding, came in a report by The Gamer. The news has since been verified by various other sources.
Ruffian games have a history of working on AAA titles, and the studio is known to have been working alongside Rockstar Games for at least the past year on some unknown projects. According to an ex-employee, Rockstar is currently working on multiple titles.
One of these titles is speculated as being a Red Dead Redemption remaster, given the studios previous work on Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Rockstar also made an announcement earlier this year, that GTA V would be released for the next-gen consoles, which could see Ruffian Games playing a part in the process, but for now, we can only speculate.
According to a Company House Listing, Take-Two, the parent company of Ruffian Games, is thought to have taken a larger stake in the merger, which will see Take-Two controlling more than 75%.
Ruffian Games was established back in 2008, consisting of talented developers from Climax, DMA Design, and RealTime Worlds, as well as a talent pool that had previous experience working on titles such as Fable II, GTA, Project Gotham Racing and the original Crackdown.
There’s no shortage of talent at Ruffian Games (Rockstar Dundee), and we’ll just have to wait to see what the studio has been working on with Rockstar, if it isn’t anything that has already been speculated above.
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues, and the sale of video games increases, there has been a lot of acquisitions in the video game sector, and there will no doubt be more to come, as companies look to capitalize on their growing revenue streams.