THQ Nordic announced that they have acquired the development studio Piranha Bytes, along with some of the studio’s top performing intellectual properties.

DSO Gaming is reporting that the deal sees THQ Nordic taking control of Risen, ELEX and the Gothic series.

THQ Nordic will be the publisher, distributor, and marketer for Piranha Bytes’ upcoming projects. In the press release project director and game designer from Piranha Bytes, Björn Pankratz, acknowledged that the studio is already several years into a new project, saying…

“There are situations in life where you think to yourself “This feels right.” Well, this is exactly one of them. We have been working on some great and exciting things over the past couple of years and we are extremely stoked about what the future brings with the right partner and the right network of companies. After all, we want to continue to create great, memorable, and impactful games with as much creative freedom as possible, and with THQ Nordic we know we are now part of a family, which supports us by all means in our efforts.”

THQ has been scooping up a ton of Eastern European studios, focusing on rekindling the fires of the AA sector, which had been lost due to the bloat and market recklessness of the AAA publishers.

Many of Piranha Bytes’ titles are pretty old and mostly forgotten at this point, so it wouldn’t be shocking if THQ had them working on remasters or remakes of some of their niche action-RPGs like Gothic.

Since the deal just took place we’ll have to for further news to find out what THQ specifically has in store for the German studio. So far THQ has been expanding their library of studios with companies like Warhorse Studios and Bugbear Entertainment to name a few. It’s hard to see them as a hero in this scenario, though, given that they were quick to kowtow to the journo-terrorists who bullied them into an apology for hosting an AMA on 8chan.

(Thanks for the news tip Quickshooter)