I guess that’s a strangely good sign for the industry.

We now have a clearer picture of how things unfolded when Krafton acquired Tango Gameworks and their latest IP. Hi-Fi noise.

As Genki_JPN shared on Twitter, Stephen Totilo learned the details of this acquisition and reported it on GameFile. As it turns out, the deal was only completed earlier this month.

While Tango wanted to “take over the entire development team”, the Hi-Fi noisehalf of their 100 employees had already found new jobs. For those of you wondering if there was some vague business situation that would allow them to revive the entire team, there never was.

Zenimax’s closure of Tango Gameworks actually happened, the offices actually closed, and Microsoft actually treated them to one last pizza lunch. Stephen shared this from Krafton’s PR:

“KRAFTON plans to transfer approximately 50 development staff from Tango Gameworks to KRAFTON’s Japanese subsidiary. These transferred employees will continue to work on new projects at KRAFTON, including the expansion of the HI-FI RUSH IP.”

As a result, Genki also found new job openings on Tango’s website. These are possibly intended to fill the positions of the 50 employees who left the company. But again, we must admit that we are missing some information and we do not know whether Krafton intends for Tango to continue operating independently or whether it will be integrated into its Japanese subsidiary. Or whether Tango will actually be Krafton’s Japanese subsidiary.

We confirmed early on that they had managed to bring back John Johanas, and one wonders if that could have been a point of contention. Johanas was not only director of Hi-Fi noisebut also for The Evil Within 2 And The evil within Expansions. With his resume, he would have been easy to get for any other Japanese or even Western studio. John would probably have turned down a few offers to come back here.

While it’s a little sad that Krafton couldn’t get the whole band back together, in a weird way this is a good sign for the industry. It fits with the growing picture of game studios trying to hire developers again after nearly two years of layoffs.

While we are not sure whether this means an end to layoffs, we are convinced that the industry is now in transition to more pragmatic decisions and projects and is planning to rebuild in this spirit.

We also did not miss the unusual situation of a Korean game publisher now owning a Japanese game studio, but this is probably not the first time this has happened. For everything that has gone wrong with The Callisto ProtocolKrafton has allowed Striking Distance Studios to move on with new projects, so we believe they won’t suddenly penalize Tango Gameworks if their next projects aren’t financially successful.

But we really hope Tango breaks through to a dedicated audience. The studio, like Grasshopper Manufacture and PlatinumGames, has proven to have a unique vision, and so we want to see them continue to take those bold risks to create exciting games that no one else is making.