Halo, Hogwarts Legacy Co-developer Certain Affinity Becomes the Latest Keywords Studios Acquisition

ign.com:

Certain Affinity, the co-development studio behind Hogwarts Legacy, a shelved Halo Infinite battle royal game, and an early rendition of the Perfect Dark reboot, has been acquired by Keywords Studios.

In a press release published to its website, Keywords announced it would be purchasing Certain Affinity for an undisclosed sum. This brings Keywords a staff of 180 individuals across the U.S. and Canada working on "a range of announced and unannounced projects," including Exodus from Archetype Entertaiment, Last Expedition with Gala Games, and an original FPS codenamed Project: Loro. Per the press release, Certain Affinity will continue to be led by existing management, including CEO Max Hoberman and president and COO Paul Sams.

Certain Affinity is best-known for its co-development work going back to the studio's founding in 2006 by former Halo developers. Since then, it's continued to work as a supporting studio on the Halo series, as well as Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Doom (2016), and others. Project: Loro is its first wholly-owned new project.

Back in April, Certain Affinity laid off 25 employees, 10% of its workforce, citing industry-wide slowdowns in funding and investing in new lead and co-development projects as a key reason.

This is Keywords Studios' second acquisition in 2024, having picked up Wushu Studios back in August. The company itself has been quietly amassing a massive portfolio of studios and companies under its label ever since 2014, with its owned studios including Alan Wake Remastered co-developer D3T, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Marvel's Avengers co-developer Heavy Iron Studios, Luigi's Mansion 2 HD developer Tantalus Media, Age of Empires series co-developer Forgotten Empires, Hollywood production services company Blindlight, and agency PR firm Fortyseven Communications, among many others. Keywords acquired a minimum of four companies per year between the years of 2016 and 2023. As of the end of 2023, Keywords employed over 13,000 people