Lastly, some excellent news! Krafton Inc, the South Korean gaming firm recognized for its work on PUBG and The Callisto Protocol, has acquired Tango Gameworks and the award-winning Hello-Fi Rush IP from Microsoft forward of the studio’s closure.
Tango Gameworks, which created the superb Hello-Fi Rush in January 2023, can be leaping from one firm to a different, taking with it all of the employees that may have in any other case been laid off. In a press launch, Krafton describes this as its “first important funding within the Japanese gaming market,” although Tango’s different gaming IPs, akin to Ghostwire Tokyo and The Evil Inside, stay within the palms of Microsoft.
This can be a quite sudden and thrilling bit of reports in what has in any other case been a miserable wave of layoffs and closures of online game studios. The announcement that Microsoft was shutting down Tango Gameworks, together with Arkane Austin and Alpha Canine Games, hit the trade like a freight practice. Whereas all three studios had apparent deserves, Tango had lately gained awards for Hello-Fi Rush, a comparatively cheap sport with a model new IP – one thing Microsoft would seemingly need on this present local weather.
Nevertheless, its closure was introduced within the wake of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard in a cost-cutting restructuring, leaving many (together with us) quite disillusioned. However right here comes Krafton! Not solely are you securing your self studio with some nice video games, however you are additionally positive to get a PR enhance from this. It appears that evidently, at the least on this case, Microsoft’s loss is Krafton’s achieve.
It is unhappy that the Ghostwire and The Evil Inside IPs have been left behind, and this author’s private opinion is that these sequence are deader than nails on a door. However you possibly can’t have every thing. Congrats to the Tango crew for getting their film made, better of luck for his or her future initiatives, and kudos to Krafton for approaching board on the final minute and saving a crew that had no enterprise being fired within the first place.