Gearbox Fully Acquires Risk of Rain Franchise
Embracer Group has announced that Borderlands developer Gearbox now owns the Risk of Rain franchise.
“After the quarter, Gearbox acquired the Risk of Rain IP along with all released games in the commercially successful video game franchise from Hopoo Games,” Embracer Group explains in its second-quarter interim report.
“Risk of Rain now joins Gearbox’s portfolio of owned games that includes acclaimed franchises such as Borderlands, Brothers in Arms, Homeworld, and more.”
Risk of Rain was released in 2013, developed by Hopoo Games and published by Chucklefish to critical and commercial acclaim. A sequel, Risk of Rain 2, was published by Gearbox into early access in 2019 with a full 1.0 launch in 2020.
In IGN’s Risk of Rain 2 review, we said, “What’s here now is polished, fun, and immensely replayable, and what’s on the horizon leads me to believe I’ll be playing Risk of Rain 2 for a very long time to come.”
In the same report, Embracer Group has also transferred Saints Row developer Volition from PLAION Group to Gearbox, moving 195 employees over. Furthermore, after Embracer’s recent acquisition of Square Enix’s former western studios, the company is also integrating Eidos Shanghai into Gearbox.
This would allow Gearbox to work with development teams in Asia as well as have them support North American studios too.
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He's been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
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