THQ Nordic Acquires Bugbear Entertainment & Coffee Stain Studios - News
by Adam Cartwright , posted on 14 November 2018 / 2,324 Views
As part of the latest acquisition in their gaming spending spree, publisher THQ Nordic have announced that they have purchased Bugbear Entertainment (the studio behind FlatOut and the recent Wreckfest) as well as Coffee Stain Studios (developer of Sanctum and Goat Simulator), alongside a number of their associated intellectual properties.
Read the press releases below:
THQ Nordic AB is today announcing that it has acquired 90% of the shares in Bugbear Entertainment Ltd. ("Bugbear") with an option to acquire the remaining 10% in the future. Bugbear, a Helsinki-based independent studio with 18 team members developing racing games, is currently working on the critically acclaimed Wreckfest. The acquisition includes the development studio and all intellectual property rights.
THQ Nordic values Bugbear as an experienced and world leading creator of niched racing games built on their proprietary game engine enabled with vehicle destruction physics tools. Wreckfest, a demolition derby themed racing title, was successfully released for PC in June 2018 and is currently being further developed to be released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One during 2019. Bugbear is also well known for the critically acclaimed demolition derby series FlatOut, released for PC and consoles during 2004-2007.
THQ Nordic has since 2017 acted as publisher for Wreckfest, which has been the best performing game published by THQ Nordic on Steam since its June release.
THQ Nordic strongly believes in Bugbear’s competence in developing successful action racing games and wants to make long term investments to support Bugbear’s future growth journey. The acquisition of Bugbear is also THQ Nordic’s first step into the Finnish market, often rated among the world leaders in game development and THQ Nordic foresees further strategic investments in owned studios and/or publishing deals going forward.
Both parties have agreed upon not disclosing the exact purchase price. However the purchase price matches management’s estimated royalty payments to Bugbear during the upcoming three years.
THQ Nordic AB today has entered into agreement to acquire Coffee Stain Holding AB including 100 percent of its subsidiary Coffee Stain Publishing AB. Coffee Stain is a leading game developer and publisher with a growing footprint in the Nordics. The acquisition includes Intellectual property rights to Satisfactory, Goat Simulator, Sanctum and publishing rights to Deep Rock Galactic. The initial cash consideration is equivalent to SEK 317 million on a cash and debt free basis, plus additional earn-out considerations subject to fulfilment of agreed milestones.THQ Nordic estimates Coffee Stain will have net sales in the range of SEK 200-250 million and EBT in the range of SEK 100-150 million in the next financial year.
Coffee Stain will continue to operate as an independent group under the parent company, a highly complementary third leg in THQ Nordic. Coffee Stain has a footprint in the Nordics and a highly competent team creating and publishing great games. Particular strengths are in creating new products focused to digital sales, retention, cross platform and multiplayer focus. Focus going forward will be on executing on the business plan, i.e. current business portfolio and new games pipeline. The plan is also to strengthen the publishing position in the Nordic market with A/AA developers and continue to evaluate minority investments in conjunction with publishing opportunities. In addition to this, THQ Nordic sees potential for synergies within distribution, marketing, know-how and IP development.
It marks the latest development in a growing number of purchases for THQ Nordic, which has included franchises such as Alone in the Dark and publishers such as Deep Silver.
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We definitely need more AA games on the market.
They seem to have a bottomless pit of cash!
Nordic acted very clever. They have a lot of low risk projects with small budget which they port on everything. Same with the backcatalog they get, it get's also ported to everything. So they gain revenue, small for each title but it adds up. The pit of cash is surely not bottomless though, all their acquisitions are small companies. Bugbear has 18 employees, Coffee Stain 22. Big game publishers have teams of hundreds of people work on a single game for years, that are completely different dimensions.
When THQ Nordic will finally start developing games, it will get very interesting! :D
And the acquisition spree of Nordic continues. This time it's not only intellectual property but also development teams, which is something Nordic needs more of with all the IPs they acquired. They grow into a pretty good middle level publisher and developer. Nice.
Huh. Coffee Stain had a cool thing going with Sanctum. I would love to see a bigger budget take. Not AAA perhaps but a high end AA. There's real potential there.
