Ascaron Closes

[Telefrog]

A couple of weeks before the 360 version of Sacred 2 went Gold, reports came out that Ascaron Entertainment had filed for bankruptcy protection. This official forum post (http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/showthread.php?t=64252) breaks the news that the last part of Ascaron, Studio 2, (which was working on the Sacred 2 expansion) has been shuttered and all devs have been laid off.

It's true. The developers are saying goodbye. Today is the last day we have any developers.

Studio 2 is the subsidiary of Ascaron Entertainment. Ascaron died some months ago, but since Studio 2 was continuing the work at the Addon (which is almost done as I heard), it was not a big trouble regarding the development of the game. With Ascaron we lost all the devs working at the console version, this was also the reason most of the questions here could not be answered.

Not only the developers will be gone after today, also Christiane and me will not be here anymore. We belonged to Ascaron and Studio 2 took us over as Ascaron was closed. This was just until the end of July, so today..

From now on, Koch Media will take over also the Community Management with their new CM (Cm Pixel). I'm sure, he will introduce himself here the next days.


Koch Media/Deep Silver has acquired the rights to the Sacred IP, while Kalypso Media (currently handling Tropico 3) has picked up the rest of Ascaron's catalog including Port Royale, Patrician, and DarkStar One.

[Karak]

Many people won't care but I loved Sacred 2.

[Shjinta]

Many people won't care but I loved Sacred 2.

I'm with you man. I still play the game everyday. Sad to see the dev team die.

[Doogie2K]

Great, now I feel like a dick for not having bought it yet. :(

[Chris_D]

I've put in about 30 hours now, great game. Very undeserving thing to happen to a bunch of people who clearly put a lot of heart into the game.

[Bad Buddha]

Haven't picked up Sacred 2 yet, but I've played a lot of their games. Seems like the Germans have a special place in their hearts for off-beat strategy games.

I've sunk a lot of time into:
The Patrician
Patrician II
Patrician III
Port Royale
Port Royale II
and the first Sacred

Might have to grab a copy of Sacred 2 before it's a collector's item on eBay.

[RandoM51]

This isn't stopping the expansion from coming out on PC, BTW. Should come out in Germany this month, probably near the end of the year for UK/US.

Also, parts of the company were bought, so the servers will stay up and presumably the official forums as well.