Company News Warhorse Studios acquired by THQ Nordic subsidiary Koch Media

[Infinitron]

Tags: Deep Silver; Kingdom Come: Deliverance; THQ Nordic; Warhorse Studios

The sprawling THQ Nordic empire made another surprising expansion this morning with the acquisition of Warhorse Studios, developers of Codex GOTY runner-up Kingdom Come: Deliverance, for the fine sum of 33.2M Euros. More specifically, Warhorse is joining THQ Nordic's Koch Media subsidiary, better known to gamers as Deep Silver, which makes sense considering Deep Silver were the publishers for Kingdom Come. Some will rue the outspoken studio's loss of independence, but in the long run it might be better than remaining under the thumb of a Czech mobster energy magnate. Here's Koch's press release:

THQ NORDIC/KOCH MEDIA ACQUIRES AWARD-WINNING WARHORSE STUDIOS

THQ Nordic AB’s indirectly wholly owned subsidiary Koch Media GmbH has today entered into an agreement to acquire the Prague based Warhorse Studios s.r.o., a leading game developer behind the successful award-winning title Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

February 13th marks not only the 1st anniversary of the release but also unlocks a new sales achievement for the game. Warhorse and Koch Media are proud to announce that the title has sold over 2 million copies across all platforms by now. Alongside this, the game has also won over 30 media, show and sales awards all around the globe.

The acquisition, which includes the development studio and all intellectual property rights, is a natural result of the previous successful cooperation between Warhorse Studios and Koch Media.

“Becoming part of THQ Nordic family is an important milestone for our studio. We began as a small start-up with a handful of employees who were enthusiastic enough to join this challenging project. The skills of our team members, trust and support of our main investor and passion of our fans, who supported development of Kingdom Come: Deliverance through a Kickstarter campaign, helped us grow to an international level. We believe that backing by THQ Nordic and Koch Media will give us an extra push in our mission to bring exciting games to our customers and extend the frontiers of the gaming industry,” says Martin Fryvaldsky, CEO Warhorse Studios.

Dr. Klemens Kundratitz, CEO Koch Media GmbH adds: “We are delighted to welcome the team from Warhorse Studios in the Family. The successful cooperation we developed during our journey with Kingdom Come: Deliverance linked both our companies already very closely and I am sure that our now even closer combined knowledge and experience will open up amazing new opportunities for both companies. Not only the 2 Million sold copies but also the motivation within the teams to create new ideas combined with the learnings from the past, are a rock solid foundation for future projects to build on.”

”Warhorse Studios is one of the leading independent studios in Europe and I am proud to welcome them to the THQ Nordic group. Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which has now sold over 2 million copies, has been a great success since the release exactly one year ago. I look forward to continuing to witness the owners run the studio and drive the creative process for many years”, says Lars Wingefors, CEO of THQ Nordic AB.

Some more numbers:

To bring perspective to what has been a journey back in time the team sat back and relaxed a bit, which is an achievement in itself given the fact that over 5.000 liters of coffee went into creating Bohemia 1403.

Looking back the devs want to share even more facts about Kingdom Come: Deliverance and the story that started as one of the most successful Kick Starter projects and grew into one of the most celebrated RPG experiences of the past year. The script alone fills over 2.200 pages of text, that’s 4.1 Million letters. The amazing journey took Henry and the team at Warhorse to over 40 public events around the world – meaning Henry travelled 4 times around the globe – not bad for the son of a 1403 blacksmith from Bohemia! 50 actors recorded more than 45.000 unique lines for the games amazing cut scenes. And while part of the team was on the road others dedicated one year of their life to create a in game monastery.
​

More details about the acquisition are available in an additional press release on THQ Nordic's investor site.

 

[Delterius]

wat

 

[Monkey Baron]

Remember when all digital sales went directly to Warhorse? I guess that will change now. I liked THQ Nordic, but their parent company has made it hard to support them recently. I hope Vavra will ensure that nothing changes.

 

[Infinitron]

Remember when all digital sales went directly to Warhorse? I guess that will change now. I liked THQ Nordic, but their parent company has made it hard to support them recently. I hope Vavra will ensure that nothing changes.

You have it backwards, THQ Nordic is the parent company.

 

[evdk]

Stop stealing my news.

Also no need to strike-through mobster.

 

[Van-d-all]

Epic store exclusive when?

 

[vorvek]

 

[Raapys]

Has a game dev company being bought ever resulted in improved games from that developer?

 

[:Flash:]

Give us money on Kickstarter, they said.
That way we can stay independent from the evil publishers, they said.

It's funny how we're now basically back at square one, with Larian being the only independent mid-tier RPG studio.

 

[Paul_cz]

Give us money on Kickstarter, they said.
That way we can stay independent from the evil publishers, they said.

It's funny how we're now basically back at square one, with Larian being the only independent mid-tier RPG studio.

Warhorse were never really independent when 70% of the company was funded and owned by outside investor who didn't want to keep funding it forever.
There is new interview with Martin Klíma (cofounder) about the aquisition, he flatly says that

"if push comes to shove, yes the new owner THQ (Lars) can influence us, as is his right legally. But we entered the acquisition with absolute certainty and understanding between us that THQ will let us do what we do, because we have proven we can be successful at it".

 

[Darkzone]

So for the Czech Warhorse it means back ins Reich.
When do the Czechs learn not to give their prdel to HRE's D? It is only going to be torn apart, as it has been for the last seven centuries.
To be honest, i'm not pleased and neither amused.

 

[Smejki]

That way we can stay independent from the evil publishers, they said.

We said that? Where?

 

[:Flash:]

That way we can stay independent from the evil publishers, they said.

We said that? Where?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1294225970/kingdom-come-deliverance

we are going to self-publish the game[...]
negotiations would inevitably hit a dead end at the point where the publishers' marketing departments got involved. Why?
"Your game is too niche. There’s no magic. People want wizards and dragons."[...]
publishers and marketers are wrong about our game[...]
Should our Kickstarter campaign fail, it will mean that we were wrong, that there is no interest to play a game with the atmosphere of Braveheart, and that we will have to start considering working on some mobile MMO, because that's where the money is these days (or so everybody tells us).

The other studios that have recently been sold to publishers were more explicit about this than you were (and I was talking in general, not about Warhorse in particular), but you were certainly riding the anti-publisher bandwagon there as well.

 

[Paul_cz]

you were certainly riding the anti-publisher bandwagon there as well.

They were "riding the anti-publisher bandwagon" because they literally went on a worldwide tour to 15 largest publishers on the planet to pitch the game to and everyone jerked Warhorse around until they ran out of money and had to go to kickstarter. So it kinda made sense, you know?

THQ Nordic was not one of those publishers afaik, because back then they barely started existing.

You can read a detailed report of that pitching tour here:

https://warhorsestudios.cz/index.php?page=blog&entry=blog_027
https://warhorsestudios.cz/index.php?page=blog&entry=blog_031&lang=en

 

[swrench]

THQ owns Warhorse so THQ says to Warhorse you game will fail so you will need to go bust or be bought out by us. Warhorse sold their souls and is therefore dead, a zombie, I do not trust companies who are owned by other companies. They get shut down or worse change into something grotesque. Once a company sells out its over its dead, no reason to support or invest in it.