American publisher TinyBuild has acquired a selection of Bossa Studios’ games for $3million (roughly £2.5million). Additionally, Russian Studio Konfa Games has also been acquired by the publisher for $5.4million (roughly £4.2million).
The intellectual property in question includes Surgeon Simulator, I Am Fish, and I Am Bread, with the payment being upfront. This means that TinyBuild will also act as the developer for these games moving forward. Meanwhile, Konfa Games will be joining TinyBuild’s studio in Belgrad, Serbia.
Henrique Olifiers, co-founder at Bossa Studios, explained that the decision to sell its titles was partly driven by its interest in co-op PvE (player versus enemy) titles (thanks, GamesIndustry.Biz). Olifiers states, “Since early 2022, Bossa has been focused exclusively in the genre of co-op PvE. We have been prototyping a lot, and now find ourselves in full production of titles we are pouring our hearts and souls into.”
He continues: “This brought us to the question of how best to take care of our legacy, our existing games, and how to ensure they have a future of their own.” He concludes that with TinyBuild’s acquisition the team was able to move on to new projects while ensuring the existing games have a new home.
Bossa Studios is most well known for comedic physics-based games, with its latest release I Am Fish being among them. Its 2020 title, Surgeon Simulator 2, received a three out of five star score from NME, with it being described as “fantastic” when it’s “flowing with body parts and frantic buddy-comedy surgery”, but was criticised for being “slightly too repetitive” and “buggy”.
In other news, Embracer Group has completed its acquisition of Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal and Square Enix Montréal, as well as 50 different titles including the likes of Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Legacy Of Kain.