 | |
| Company type | Division |
|---|---|
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | November 2002; 22 years ago (2002-11) |
| Headquarters | , Austria |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | SeeList of Deep Silver games |
| Parent | Plaion |
| Subsidiaries | |
| Website | deepsilver.com |
Deep Silver is an Austrianvideo game publisher and adivision ofPlaion.[1]
Deep Silver was announced in November 2002, with their first release to beAnarchy Online: The Notum Wars.[2] According to Craig McNichol, who ran Koch Media's England branch, the idea behind Deep Silver was to have a business segment that would develop games that would complement the games Koch Media was distributing on behalf of other publishers.[3] McNichol also stated that Deep Silver's name was subject to much internal discussion.[3] Koch Media invested€500,000 in Deep Silver in July 2003, and in November 2003, all of Koch Media's game publishing operations (excluding distribution) were reallocated to Deep Silver.[4][5] The division had been continuously active since, primarily in Europe.[1] In April 2008, Koch Media opened Deep Silver, Inc., a subsidiary branch based inLos Angeles, under Deep Silver's name.[6] In August 2007, Games That Matter, a studio founded by formerRockstar Vienna employees in 2006, was acquired by Koch Media and became part of Deep Silver under the name Deep Silver Vienna.[7] Co-founders Niki Laber and Hannes Seifert had left the studio by January 2010, at which point Deep Silver Vienna was shut down.[8][9] Deep Silver Vienna has only produced one game,Cursed Mountain, which was developed in association withSproing Interactive and released in August 2009 for theWii.[10]
Deep Silver first gained widespread attention with their release ofDead Island and their acquisition ofVolition.[1]Dead Island had been their first release to reach the top spot on sales charts in September 2011,[11] and they acquired Volition in January 2013, alongside the rights to theMetro series, from thebankruptcy proceedings ofTHQ.[12] Deep Silver also acquired a minority interest inBerlin-basedfree-to-play game developer Infernum Productions in December 2012.[13] In February 2013, Deep Silver announced its intentions to expand into the mobile games market.[14]
In December 2013,Fishlabs, which had filed forself-administration the previous October, was acquired by Koch Media and became Deep Silver's dedicated mobile game studio.[15] As the agreement was an asset deal, the legal entity of the studio was dissolved and Fishlabs was reorganised as a division, officially known as Deep Silver Fishlabs.[15][16] In July 2014, Deep Silver acquired the rights toHomefront and its in-development sequel,Homefront: The Revolution, from German developerCrytek.[17] Dambuster Studios (officially, Deep Silver Dambuster Studios) was established to continue the development ofThe Revolution, succeedingCrytek UK.[17] Later on the same day, Crytek announced that Crytek UK would be closed, and all of its staff transferred to Dambuster Studios.[18] In August 2018, Koch Media acquired the rights to theTimeSplitters games, which would be overseen by Deep Silver.[19]
In May 2020, Koch Media andTHQ Nordic, by this time both part ofEmbracer Group, exchanged severalintellectual property rights: Deep Silver receivedRed Faction andPainkiller, while handing offRisen,Rush for Berlin,Sacred,Second Sight, andSingles: Flirt Up Your Life.[20]
In May 2021, Deep Silver and Koch Media, part ofEmbracer Group since 2018, announced thatFree Radical Design had been re-founded. Work on a new part of theTimeSplitters series is to begin before the end of 2021.[21] In November 2022, Volition was transferred to Gearbox Entertainment, another company under Embracer Group. In December 2023, Free Radical Design was closed down amidst a widescale company restructuring from Embracer Group.[22]
In January 2013, Deep Silver announced aspecial edition of their then-upcoming gameDead Island: Riptide, titledZombie Bait Edition, which would include astatuette of a mutilated female torso in Europe and Australia.[23] After strong criticism over the item, Deep Silver initially offered an apology, stating that they were "deeply sorry" and promising consumers that something like that would not happen again.[24] However, when the game was released in April that year, the bust was still included, generating further backlash.[24]
In January 2019, Deep Silver partnered withEpic Games on a one-year exclusivity deal for thePC version of their upcoming gameMetro Exodus on Epic's digital distribution storefront, theEpic Games Store.[25] Through this deal,Metro Exodus was removed fromSteam, another digital distribution storefront, where Deep Silver had been sellingpre-orders for the game since August 2018.[26] Additionally, the deal was made and announced less than three weeks prior to game's release, causing criticism and confusion among critics and fans of theMetro franchise.[25]Valve, the company behind Steam, labelled the move as unfair to consumers, while fansreview-bombed previous entries of the series on Steam.[26][27]
Franchises published by Deep Silver includeMetro from4A Games and Volition'sSaints Row, both of which were acquired through THQ's bankruptcy auction in 2013, as well asTechland-createdDead Island. Other games includeHomefront: The Revolution by Dambuster Studios,Shenmue III byYs Net, andPayday 3 byStarbreeze Studios
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