MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The Cloud Imperium Group has announced that it has acquired Canada-based studio Turbulent in its entirety, following a 25% shareholder stake made in 2020.
Turbulent and Cloud Imperium have worked together since 2012 on development for Cloud Imperium’s multiplayer space game Star Citizen, which remains in development. Cloud Imperium also said in the press release announcing the acquisition that its further investment in Montreal and Toronto reflects its ‘strong presence in the bustling games community in Canada’.
The company currently employs over 1,100 employees from around the world, and the group has additional studio offices in Los Angeles, Austin, Frankfurt, and Manchester. It is expected that Turbulent will retain all 189 of its employees, and that its work on existing projects will continue uninterrupted, with no changes in studio management taking place. In addition, Turbulent CEO Marc Beaudet and CTO Benoit Beauséjour will become shareholders and executives at Cloud Imperium.
“We enthusiastically welcome Turbulent to our family of studios, as an integral part of our Star Citizen development,” said Chris Roberts, CEO and founder of the Cloud Imperium Group. “Fundamentally, we recognize the shared cultural values and passions between our two companies, which have helped create a natural synergy and development pipeline for our joint projects over the past decade.”
“After more than a decade of shared success, it was only natural that the next step be to join forces,” said Benoit Beauséjour, co-founder of Turbulent. “The Montreal and Quebec gaming and tech industry benefit from this transaction, which serves to reaffirm the depth of talent to be found here. And we will benefit from the expertise of a huge global network of CIG talent while our studio team will now be able to work on projects that are international in scope.”
“Benoit and Marc have been great partners since the very first days of our crowdfunding campaign and have been an integral part of all our successes these past 12 years, from supporting our crowdfunding campaign, to developing our e-commerce platform, to building our marketing and platform infrastructure, and now to actively contributing to the development of our games,” added Roberts. “As we approach some of our biggest milestones to date, we’ve never felt better equipped to realise the unprecedented ambition of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. We are on a unique journey and the Turbulent team have been with us every step of the way, sharing our relentless passion for making the best game universe ever. We could not be happier to welcome them to our CIG family of studios!“
If you’d like to learn more about Cloud Imperium, we’d suggest you check out their website.
