It has been reported that Skybound has entered the publishing side of gaming with the most recent move to release retail versions of Hinterland’s The Long Dark and Monomi Park’s Slime Rancher this year. This branch is referred to as Skybound Games.

If you don’t know, Skybound Games is led by 505 Games co-founder Ian Howe, and much like 505 Games this branch will publish video games. Additionally, it has been reported by websites like gamesindustry.biz and gamasutra.com that this branch aims to provide publishing services and multimedia opportunities to independent game developers.

As mentioned above, Skybound Games has already picked up The Long Dark and Slime Rancher, both of which will see physical retail versions later this year.

Reports also state that Howe wants to provide “traditional publishing” services, aiming to use Skybound’s resources to help developers expand their own properties into other forms of entertainment.

The initiative behind this move is so that intellectual properties have more room to expand across various media. Furthermore, this will theoretically broaden the appeal of an intellectual property through stuff like comic books and so on.

According to Howe, he believes that…

“Partnering with David Alpert, Robert Kirkman, and the rest of the Skybound team is the perfect home for a new video games publishing venture, given their continued dedication to creators in all forms of media.”

 

“The company we are building will not only provide a full range of publishing services but will also offer opportunities for game creators to expand their intellectual properties into other forms of media via Skybound’s existing relationships.”

There’s no telling how this deal will pan out, but it seems that we’ll find out sometime soon given the partnership deals between Hinterland and Monomi Park will manifest this September. You can keep an eye on The Long Dark and Slime Rancher’s retail release by visiting skybound.com.