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Giana Sisters developer Black Forest Games buys itself out of Embracer: 'Some of the best games of the last decade came from teams of fifty, not five hundred'
According to the press release, "THQ Nordic and Black Forest Games continue to collaborate on game development tasks."
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Black Forest Games, German developer of early Kickstarter success Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, as well as remakes of the first two Destroy All Humans games, and, er, Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back, has announced it's leaving THQ Nordic after nine years within the Embracer Group subsidiary.
Following a management buyout, Black Forest has founded an indie studio group called Third Signal. "Some of the best games of the last decade came from teams of fifty, not five hundred," said Third Signal's founder and CEO Andreas Tobler. "Black Forest Games is one of them, and the right studio to launch Third Signal. Our vision is to build a developer-driven group and give teams the independence, resources and creative freedom to continue their creative legacy and bring their own ideas to life."
Black Forest Games was founded by staff of Spellbound Entertainment, creator of the Desperados series and Arcania: Gothic 4 before being closed in 2012. As Black Forest Games they mostly worked on revivals of existing series, and were developing a game based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic The Last Ronin before it was canceled and then revived as a Platinum joint. They were also one of the studios under Embracer's umbrella hit with layoffs in 2024, losing roughly 50 staff.
"We are grateful to THQ Nordic and Embracer for nine good years and the games we made together," said managing director Adrian Goersch. "Now, we're excited to shape our own future as owners again, to work on an exciting new project with a great team and strong partners behind us."
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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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