Following a difficult year for Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios, a "core team" of around 20 employees has now decamped to Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser's Absurd Ventures, establishing a new studio that'll be known as Absurd Marin.
A month after Immortals of Aveum released, Ascendent Studios announced it had made the "painfully difficult, but necessary" decision to lay off 45 percent of its staff, equating to around 40 employees.
Earlier this year, it was reported a "large portion" of the remaining team had been furloughed, leaving the future of Ascendant in doubt. But now, Houser's Absurd Ventures has announced it's taken at least some of the studio under its wing.
As for Ascendant Studios, no official notice of its closure has been shared, so its current status remains uncertain. But having lost its founder and 20 employees from an already substantially diminished team.
The pair of studios had been included as an option in the $247 million sale of the Saber Interactive division to a group of private investors. However, on Friday Embracer confirmed that the deal had now been settled and the option to include 4A and Zen in the deal cancelled.
The developers will now remain at Embracer. 4A has two ‘AAA’ titles in development, according to Embracer.
That's according to senior product manager, Harrison Froeschke, who stated in a since-nuked LinkedIn account that they had led the "monetisation strategy of the store cosmetics, pricing, bundle offers, personalised discounts, and roadmap planning which have driven over $150m [microtransaction] lifetime revenue".