Focus Home acquires The Surge developer Deck13

French publisher Focus Home Interactive has acquired German studio Deck13, the developers responsible for soulslike series The Surge and Lords of the Fallen (though not its troubled sequel), and a publisher in their own right through their indie spotlight initiative. Focus Home have previously worked with Deck13, acting as publisher on both games in The Surge series, and are more generally known as the publisher of Farming Simulator, SnowRunner, Vampyr, A Plague Tale, Greedfall, and others.

Focus Home acquired Deck13's staff of 60 as well as their intellectual property and the indie publishing sideline which notably brought us Radical Fish's popular action-RPG CrossCode in 2018. The deal was for €7.1 million or about $US7,976,000.

Jürgen Goeldner, chairman of the Focus Home management board, said (via Businesswire), "We are very happy to welcome the team of Deck13 and look forward to working together to achieve our ambitious objectives. This acquisition marks a major milestone in our growth story and will strengthen our business model. This acquisition will be financed by the drawing down of the new bank financing of €46 million which will also support our other future developments".

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.