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Sega sell off studio behind Endless Legend and Humankind as part of “restructuring” - but it goes to the original ownersEndless business
Endless business
Image credit:Amplitude Studios
Image credit:Amplitude Studios
To give you some context, Sega have been “restructuring” their European games studios since around September 2023 (amid otherlayoff hijinks in the US). This has meantlayoffs at Creative Assembly and the sale of Relic, developers of World War II strategy gameCompany Of Heroes 3. Today’s “management buyout” of Amplitude, which sees the studio handed back to its original owners, is just another step in this process, it seems.
Meanwhile, Amplitude madetheir own announcementof the buyout, framing it as a return to being an indie studio, which does have its advantages to be fair. For example, they say the creative direction of the Endless games are now fully in “the hands of those who know them best.”
“This decision allows us to be more agile in our approach,” said studio co-founder Romain de Waubert de Genlis, “while continuing to shape the vision that has been ours from the very beginning.”
This doesn’t rule out more turbulence for the studio - the publishing environment remains somewhat ruthless - but at least the companies part on relatively amicable terms. For background, Segaacquired Amplitude in 2016, and at the time the studio’s leadership was happy about that, saying they liked “how [Sega] treat their internal studios”.
I do hope it’s a smooth transition back to indie life. The studio’s past games include theEndless Spaceseries,Endless Legend, and most recently the nifty sci-fi twin stick shooterEndless Dungeon, which Iliked enoughto call it one of ourbest roguelikes. They also continue to work on their big 4X strategy game,Humankind, which is a"heavyweight competitor to Civilization", according to our Nate (RPS in peace). In other words, they make some pretty good games. I hope their launch out into the free seas of game publishing goes well. It’s choppy out there.
Sega, for their part, have not been very fun today. They are alsodelisting 60 classic games from Steam, includingCrazy Taxiand Streets Of Rage. Boooooo!
