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Starbreeze Studios, the Swedish developer and publisher responsible for Syndicate, Payday 2 and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, has acquired 90.5% of Indian studio Dhruva Interactive for $8.5 million.
Dhruva is one of India’s biggest development companies. Specialising in art production, Dhruva has provided its services to several studios across the world, working on high profile titles such as Halo 5, Forza Horizon 3 and the upcoming Sea of Thieves. It has three studios in total, with two based in Bangalore and one in the northern city of Dehradun.
In a statement released on Starbreeze’s website, the company says that Dhruva will continue to operate under its own brand as well as continue to work with its existing global client base.
"Through the acquisition, Starbreeze secures its art production needs for projects such as OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead and Nozon’s VFX production, improves the quality of its in-house production projects and lowers its operating costs," the company stated.
"It will also enable Starbreeze to provide full end to end services to its participating publishing partners and to add significant value to its VR ecosystem."
Starbreeze CEO Bo Andersson-Klint commented: "Bold plans need the right partners and Content is King. We have worked withDhruva Interactive for several years and know them well. I am confident that bringing Dhruva into the Starbreeze family will strengthen Starbreeze as a global entertainment company."
Dhruva CEO and founder Rajesh Rao added: "Starbreeze has been a great client, and over time we realized that Starbreeze is exactly the kind of company that we’d like to evolve with. They have strong games, an awesome vision for VR, similar culture and a skilled management team. Our talent art teams contribute to the some of the biggest and most visually stunning games in the industry today. As part of the Starbreeze family, we will be able to add cutting edge VR content to our repertoire as well. It’s an extremely exciting time.”
The deal still needs to be approved by foreign investors in India, but Starbreeze says it expects the deal to close at the end of Q1 2017.
