Sega sell off studio behind Endless Legend and Humankind as part of "restructuring" - but it goes to the original owners

rockpapershotgun.com:

Amplitude Studios, developers of many a game with "Endless" in the name, have split with publisher Sega to become independent again, with ownership of the studio reverting to its original founders and "other members of the team". The developers say everyone is parting "on good terms" and that the last eight years of getting published under Sega has been "amazing". But there are other businessy reasons, of course. Namely, Sega have been trying to trim down their European studios for the past year, and Amplitude is just the latest bunch of devs affected by that.

To give you some context, Sega have been "restructuring" their European games studios since around September 2023 (amid other layoff hijinks in the US). This has meant layoffs at Creative Assembly and the sale of Relic, developers of World War II strategy game Company Of Heroes 3. Today's "management buyout" of Amplitude, which sees the studio handed back to its original owners, is just another step in this process, it seems.

The announcement of the sale was included in a financial document published today by Sega, which reports an extraordinary loss of 5.9 billion yen (about £29.9 million or $38.7 million) due to the sale of the strategy game developers. Sega say "this marks the completion of the series of structural reforms". But of course, we have heard things like that before from other corps which proved to be untrue. Stay frosty, is what I'm saying.

Meanwhile, Amplitude made their own announcement of the buyout, framing it as a return to being an indie studio, which does have its advantages to be fair. For example, they say the creative direction of the Endless games are now fully in "the hands of those who know them best."

"This decision allows us to be more agile in our approach," said studio co-founder Romain de Waubert de Genlis, "while continuing to shape the vision that has been ours from the very beginning."

This doesn't rule out more turbulence for the studio - the publishing environment remains