Star Citizen Devs Grow in Power; Already One of Largest Indie Studios
Cloud Imperium Games, the developers of Star Citizen, have announced the acquisition of Canadian Turbulent. The merger will make the developers a real powerhouse among independent studios. With this make the game that has been in development for over a decade finally complete?
Cloud Imperium Games is growing in strength. Developers of space simulator Star Citizen have announced the acquisition of Turbulent, a Canadian studio that for more than a decade had helped CIG in developing the still unfinished game. The developers made the news of the acquisition via their website.
"After more than a decade of fruitful partnership and years of working together in the trenches to build something the industry has never seen before, we decided it was time for CIG and Turbulent to finally officially join forces. We made the deal a few months ago, and now we have completed the process of merging our companies and Turbulent formally joined the CIG family last week," reads the announcement.
Based in Montreal, Turbulent is a consulting developer with expertise in education, entertainment and video games. With the acquisition, the Cloud Imperium Games group will have 1,100 employees from around the world, making it one of the largest independent (formally) studios.
It is expected that there will be no layoffs at Turbulent, and work on existing projects will continue uninterrupted, with no changes in the studio's management. In addition, the corporation's CEO, Marc Beaudet, and chief technology officer, Benoit Beauséjour, will become shareholders in Cloud Imperium (via gamesindustry.biz).
Given that the two companies were involved together in Star Citizen for many years already, it's hard to expect that the official merger will in any way accelerate work on the simulator. Nevertheless, let's hope that one of the most expensive development cycles in the history of the industry will finally be completed.
