I'm still shocked 8chan exists in the first place.

That gives me a feeling of déjà vu from about 15 years ago, though I can't put my finger on the name. Just remember that they bought studios left and right and then went bust couple years later because they burnt through all their money and the gamers didn't like the changes to the studios and game series.

Well, the known mid-range publishers that went completely or partially bust is not that large. THQ, Atari, Majesco, and Midway come to mind, but neither had a studio buying rush beforehand as far as I remember, but Majesco and THQ bought up plenty of licenses before going under, so that might be. I remember Majesco focusing and investing heavily at first into the PSP and the Advent series but neither worked out for them.

I checked, and I think the Publisher was... THQ!

THQ bought a ton of studios before the financial crisis (6 studios alone in 2006), but got hit badly by the crisis. And since they burnt all their money in acquisitions, they didn't have any reserves for the crisis, and had to file for chapter 11 in 2012. So maybe that just comes with the name.

Although Nordic games already was on a shopping spree long before they acquired the THQ brand name for themselves. And it's long enough to even warrant it's own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_THQ_Nordic

Also funny how this closes the circle: Their first acquisition (still just as Nordic games) was JoWood, the owner of the Gothic brand. Now with Piranha Byte, they also have it's creators.

My memory is not as it used to be, but didn't PB got the rights to Gothic back quite some time ago?

Those studios may not be big, but according to their financial report, they have a total of 80 games in development, 48 of them unannounced. So they can't be that small either.

Yeah, with a lot of small studios you get a lot of small games. And this report includes Koch and all it's studios.

Crytek didn't buy as much but they did go expansion crazy. They ended up restructuring after they couldn't even pay their employees. Closed or sold off a bunch of studios and IP. One of those studios was only open a year, which is kind of crazy to think about.

Not fully.

JoWood made a Gothic 4 without their involvement (and dropping the Gothic name of Gothic 4 years later) pretty much killed the franchise. Of course, JoWood retained the rights to Gothic 4 since they made it themselves, further complicating the issue.

We'll see how many of those games are small. Still that's their business, A and AA games.

And it was THQ Nordic the one who bought Crytek some of their studios and IPs.