Krafton, the company responsible for PUBG: Battlegrounds, has apparently acquired The Ascent developer Neon Giant, according to a recent earnings document. The studio is currently hard at work on its next game, which sounds like it'll be pretty different to The Ascent.
This news comes via Krafton's Q3 2022 earnings statement, in which the Korean company names Neon Giant, alongside The Callisto Protocol developer Striking Distance, as its European studios. No formal announcement regarding this acquisition was made, so this has come as something of a surprise.
In any case, Neon Giant, according to Krafton, is currently working on its newest project, which Krafton describes as an "open-world FPS". Evidently, Neon Giant is aiming to leave its top-down third-person roots behind, although we'll have to wait and see whether the new FPS takes place in the same universe as The Ascent.
If you're a finance nerd, you'll appreciate some of the other info that's available in the Krafton earnings presentation. The studio's profit is up 17% over last quarter, with PUBG remaining a nice little moneyspinner for the company. On console, Krafton says Subnautica continued to generate solid revenue for it in Q3, so that Unknown Worlds purchase last year is probably looking like a sounder and sounder investment to the Korean giant.
Looking to the future, Krafton is putting a lot of its eggs in the Callisto Protocol basket. The game will have a full-scale global marketing campaign to back it up, and Krafton says previews have been "overwhelmingly positive". Of course, the company makes no mention of the brutal crunch that Striking Distance is apparently putting its employees through to finish the game. I suppose that's not the kind of thing you'd usually find on an earnings report, eh?
We'll bring you more on Neon Giant and its next projects as soon as we get it. In the meantime, you can grab the studio's cyberpunk looter-shooter The Ascent on PC (where it's currently 67% off, at least if you grab it on Steam), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation consoles right now. It's also available via Xbox Game Pass.