Deep Silver acquires Homefront property from Crytek — sequel development switches to new studio

Homefront is changing hands for a second time.

After moving from defunct publisher THQ to developer Crytek, Deep Silver parent company Koch Media revealed that it is purchasing the intellectual property from the developer. The publisher also purchased all of the development assets for Homefront: The Revolution from Crytek. Production of that upcoming military shooter is now shifting to Deep Silver’s newly formed Dambuster Studios. This comes after Crytek ran into a number of financial issues and reportedly failed to pay the team working on Homefront at Crytek U.K.

Dambuster, like Crytek U.K., is in Nottingham, England. We’ve reached out to Crytek to ask if this means that Crytek U.K. is closing, and we’ll update this story with any new information.

“We are thrilled to see another great property joining the Deep Silver universe,” Koch Media chief executive Dr. Klemens Kundratitz said in a statement. “We strongly believe in the potential of Homefront: The Revolution and trust in the new team to continue the path they have been walking in the last years.”

Crytek recently announced that it secured an unspecified source of funding that would help bail it out of its recent financial hole, but the company did not provide details. It appears likely that funding was this deal with Deep Silver. We’ve asked Crytek to confirm this, and it told us that it is working on a statement.

Over the last few months, reports claim that Crytek lost a big game contract and then started missing payroll for many of its employees. The hardest hit, according to rumors, was Crytek U.K. Top creative talent left that studio, and several sites reported that employees were walking out on the Homefront project.

While Deep Silver’s Danbury studio is in Nottingham, the publisher did not purchase Crytek U.K. Instead, Koch bought the Homefront brand and all of the work put into The Revolution and then started a new studio, and Crytek confirmed that its Homefront team will transfer over to Deep Silver.

Crytek is responsible for major triple-A releases like Crysis 3 and the Xbox One exclusive Ryse: Son of Rome, but the company is also moving heavily into free-to-play and self-publishing. The studio introduced a free online shooter called Warface last year that it hoped would catch on around the globe, but the game only really found an audience in Russia.

Deep Silver has slowly established itself as one of fastest-rising publishers in triple-A gaming. Danbuster is the company’s third studio joining Volition and Deep Silver Fishlabs. The company is best known for releasing the zombie adventure game Dead Island as well as the absurd open-world crime series Saints Row.