Until Dawn, The Quarry Dev Sold In Gaming's Latest Buyout

Supermassive Games, the British game developer behind Until Dawn and The Quarry more recently, has been sold. Nordisk Games--which already owns Just Cause studio Avalanche--has acquired 100% ownership of Supermassive. Nordisk previously held a 30.7% stake in Supermassive.

Supermassive has more than 300 developers, and the press release announcing the buyout made no mention of any staffing changes, apart from plans to grow. Supermassive CEO Pete Samuels said, "We have an exciting and ambitious growth strategy for Supermassive Games and Nordisk Games ownership only enhances that. I'm hugely excited about where the security offered by this partnership, and continued access to the expertise within Nordisk Games, will take us next."

In addition to Avalanche, Nordisk Games owns or has minority investments in other gaming companies such as Star Stable Entertainment, Flashbulb Games, Nitro Games, and MercurySteam.

Financial terms of Nordisk's buyout of Supermassive were not disclosed.

The deal is just the latest in the gaming space. 2022 is expected to be a massive year for mergers and acquisitions in the gaming space, with some projections saying deals to together total $150 billion.

2022 began with Take-Two announcing plans to buy Zynga for $12.7 billion, which at the time was the biggest buyout in the history of video games. A month after, Microsoft announced it would purchase Activision Blizzard for $75 billion. Other deals in 2022 have included Sony proposing to buy Bungie for $3.6 billion and Embracer buying Tomb Raider and other franchises from Square Enix for $300 million.