Rockstar Games have purchased the Indian art production studio Dhruva Interactive from Starbreeze for $7.9 million. The purchase transfers all 91.82% of Starbreeze's share of the company to Rockstar and brings the art production studio alongside Rockstar India. Dhruva will join Rockstar India in working on several projects for their clients as well as joining the rest of the company in their work at Bangalore where the main studio in India is based.
Dhruva was originally purchased by Starbreeze back in 2016 for $8.5 million, and are well known for their work on games such as Halo 5, Sea of Theaves, and Quantum Break. In their time as part of Starbreeze, they also worked on the parent company's very own Payday 2. Rajesh Rao, Dhruva's CEO and founder had this to say:
"Rockstar Games are the undisputed leaders of innovation and creativity in modern game development, Dhruva Interactive was founded with the aim of creating a world-class game development community in India, and so bringing the Dhruva team under the Rockstar Games label is further proof that we have succeeded in creating a talented team that can contribute to the best games in the world while helping to create a thriving local game developer community in India."The sale of Dhruva comes after a difficult year for its original owner Starbreeze. The company has been struggling financially for a while with the poor performance of Overkill's The Walking Dead and their application to the Swedish government for a period of 'reconstruction' earlier this year. They also reported a loss of over 50% when compared to Q1 of the business year last year and are having to seek funding to keep them afloat.
What do you think of the acquisition of Dhruva Interactive by Rockstar? What projects do you think the company will be working on now? Let us know what you think the comment section down below.
