Avalanche Studios, the developer behind Just Cause, Mad Max, and the upcoming Rage 2 has been purchased by Nordisk Film. As their name implies, Nordisk Film is mostly involved in movies, having produced acclaimed films such as Kon-Tiki, A War, and Land of Mine, but they’re also the distributor of PlayStation products for the Nordic region, so they know a thing or two about games. Nordisk purchased a portion of Avalanche back in late 2017, but now they have a controlling share.
It sounds Avalanche will be sticking to what they do best under Nordisk ownership:
Related RAGE 2 Just Cause Dev Avalanche Studios Opens New Sweden-based Studio to Develop Current and Future Avalanche IPs
Under Nordisk Film’s ownership, Avalanche Studios’ strategy will remain unaltered. It will continue as a creatively independent game studio, developing its own IP’s, as well as catering to third-party publishers and license holders. Following the deal, co-founders Christofer Sundberg and Linus Blomberg will remain at Avalanche Studios, focusing on the creative and technical aspects of its games development.
Avalanche CEO Pim Holfve credits Nordisk investment with helping the studio grow…
“We have had a fantastic year with Nordisk Film as part of Avalanche Studios. We’ve grown and matured at a pace which was previously not possible. Even though we’ll continue to operate as an independent studio, Nordisk Film will – with a century of experience from growing creative businesses – provide us with a more solid foundation. I could not be happier to have them on-board.”
Nordisk’s purchase of Avalanche will be finalized next month. It will be interesting to see what, if any, changes result from Nordisk’s purchase. Avalanche tends to do a lot of work-for-hire stuff, as most mid-size indie devs do in order to survive – perhaps the Nordisk investment will let give them the opportunity to create more original IPs. On a related note, Avalanche just opened a new Swedish studio to help develop current and future projects.
As mentioned, Avalanche’s next project is Rage 2, which is being co-developed with Id Software. We’ll get a better look at the game, which launches in mid-2019, at E3 2018.
