Piranha Bytes, the German developer of the Gothic, Risen, and Elex RPGs, has reportedly been closed by mum or dad firm Embracer Group. The closure comes lower than six months after Piranha Bytes mentioned it was “in a troublesome scenario” however was nonetheless looking for a approach to transfer forward with its subsequent recreation with a purpose to maintain the studio open.
The closure was first reported by Polish gaming web site CD Motion, which quoted a former worker as saying the studio had been shuttered on the finish of June after Embracer was unable to discover a purchaser.
Shortly after that report got here to gentle, former inventive director Bjorn Pankratz, alongside together with his spouse and fellow Piranha Bytes veteran Jennifer, introduced the launch of a brand new indie outfit referred to as Pithead Studio.
“We needed to maintain doing what we love,” Pankratz mentioned within the studio announcement video. “This appeared like one of the best ways to do it.”
The video makes no point out of Piranha Bytes, however a message posted on the Pithead Studio Discord factors to an sad ending.
With Pithead Studio we have now based a brand new indie studio.Sooner or later we are going to develop immersive and unbelievable indie video games.Curious? Then check out our newest video.https://t.co/qTTwtLqtnmPlease unfold the phrase!#pithead #pitheadstudio #indiedev pic.twitter.com/oCzXAKKwtJJuly 8, 2024
“As you certain seen, the gaming trade was not doing effectively final yr,” it states. “This was additionally the case for the Embracer Group, to which THQ Nordic and Piranha Bytes belong. Lots of studios needed to shut, hundreds of individuals within the gaming trade worldwide misplaced their jobs. Sadly, Piranha Bytes was additionally affected by this.”
A separate message notes that the Gothic, Risen, and Elex video games stay the property of THQ Nordic, the Embracer model beneath which Piranha Bytes operated, and Pithead Studio has no data of, or affect over, what’s going to occur to them sooner or later.
“All we all know is that Alkimia Interactive from Spain is engaged on an Elex remake,” Pithead mentioned. “We’re not included within the making of the remake in any type, and subsequently don’t have any affect on it. Due to this fact, we’re as excited as you’re and can observe it with curiosity.”
Watch On
Piranha Bytes wasn’t a “massive” studio but it surely did have deep roots in PC gaming. Based in 1997, its first recreation was the 2001 fantasy RPG Gothic, and whereas it wasn’t an enormous hit, it established Piranha Bytes as a maker of bold Eurojank—the kind of video games that are inclined to have small however very devoted followings. That fame was cemented through the years by two extra Gothic RPGs, the Risen RPG trilogy, and two Elex video games: The primary Elex, as an illustration, “is the sort of bizarre, flawed RPG we don’t all the time get anymore,” we wrote in our 2017 evaluation, the sort of factor that “will enchantment to die-hard RPG followers and few others.”
Embracer-owned THQ Nordic acquired Piranha Bytes in 2019, when Embracer’s ‘purchase the whole lot that is not nailed down’ spree was getting as much as full velocity, but it surely fell sufferer to the collapse of a $2 billion funding deal that resulted in lots of of layoffs by way of 2023 and ’24, and the closure of different studios together with Volition, Free Radical, and Items Interactive.
A message posted on the Piranha Bytes web site in January saying the studio was looking for a companion for its new mission has been eliminated. Through the Wayback Machine, that message was current as not too long ago as June 2—all that is still now’s the studio emblem and phone data.
THQ Nordic declined to touch upon the reported closure.
