Sumo Group acquires Yorkshire-based Red Kite Games

Sumo Group has acquired God of War III: Remastered, DiRT 4 and Call of Duty: Strike Team developer, Red Kite Games. The Yorkshire-based studio will continue to operate under its own name as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sumo Digital, and will be able to "further extend its services to the games industry and expand the current team of 27 talented and experienced developers".

Founded in 2003, Sumo Digital will now employ 500+ staff across six studios in Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle, Brighton (The Chinese Room), Pune in India, and now and Red Kite’s Huddersfield, UK base. This latest acquisition follows the absorption of Newcastle studio CCP Games in January 2018, and The Chinese Room in August 2018.

"Red Kite is an established brand with talented people, providing engineering and code support services to some of the biggest names in the industry," said Carl Cavers, CEO of Sumo Group. "Simon and his team are already well known to us and we are confident that Red Kite will integrate quickly and successfully. On behalf of the whole Group, I extend a warm welcome."

"We are very much looking forward to being part of Sumo Group. Sumo Digital is such an exciting business, working on incredible projects," added Simon Iwaniszak, studio director of Red Kite. "Being part of a creative, ambitious and supportive Group, which is delivering great results, will present new opportunities and new challenges to Red Kite. We have exciting plans for the studio and believe that Sumo Group will help us achieve our full potential."

"Red Kite has a proven track record in providing valuable services to game developers and publishers, I’m delighted to welcome the team to Sumo and look forward to supporting their continued success," said Paul Porter, managing director at Sumo Digital.

"I am a great believer in enabling people to succeed and the last thing I would do is say ‘stop working the way you’ve been working and now work this way because that’s how we do it in Sheffield’. At the same time, you learn from each other," MD Porter told MCV last year. "I’m sure Sheffield and Nottingham will learn from Newcastle and vice-versa. We’re now a sum that’s greater than the individual parts – but that’s not by implementing a regime that says everyone must do it this way."