Jagex has made its second studio acquisition, this time buying Croatia-based Gamepires, the developer behind open-world survival game SCUM.
Since Jagex itself was acquired by The Carlyle Group, the company has emphasized further plans to continue growing its properties and made its first studio acquisition earlier this year. Buying US-based Pipeworks gave the company its first base in North America. Additionally, Jagex has been growing RuneScape in a number of ways as well, including tabletop games, the game’s first crossover event with Smite, and this summer’s announcement of an open-world survival game set in the RuneScape universe.
SCUM is an open-world survival game, and the deal includes plans for Jagex, as announced in a press release, to continue supporting Gamepires in the game’s development.
“Jagex, known for the success of its RuneScape franchise, will use its deep expertise in community-driven games and its platform as an international publisher to accelerate SCUM as a leading open world survival title.” The plans for the RuneScape survival game were already announced, but it wouldn’t be too off the mark to believe that maybe buying a team with open world survival experience might help with those plans in the longer term as well.
Still, SCUM will be getting lots of support. “Gamepires’ and Jagex’s community-driven approach will enable SCUM to realise its full potential with a multi-platform 1.0 release in the future,” it reads, in part. We previewed SCUM back in 2018 when it came out, and found it to be distinct and interesting.
“SCUM is a survival multiplayer/single player first person shooter. While in multiplayer you deal with not only zombies called "Puppets," and badass Mechs that want nothing more than to destroy you, but also other players and the environment. You have to eat and drink, you also have to urinate and do number 2 every now and then. Staying alive isn't always easy, but hey, what fun would it be if it were easy?”
With Jagex on board and development support to pour in, we’ll have to see what’s coming in a more robust release.
