Smilegate is a South Korean-based developer who you might recognize from mobile FPS (and PS VR2 title) Crossfire or the recent MMORPG Lost Ark, and they’ve just announced a new partnership with Absurd Ventures, the studio founded by Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser.
The news was announced early on Tuesday morning, positioned as Smilegate making a “strategic investment” in Absurd Ventures, and that in this partnership, Smilegate will work with Absurd Ventures on a new IP.
Though the press release isn’t exactly clear if that means a totally new IP, or something that Absurd Ventures already had cooking. The studio first announced two projects, neither of them games, last November after its reveal in June 2023.
Its first game project announcement didn’t come until this past May 2024, and that is said to be an open-world action-adventure title. That might be the project Smilegate will work on, but of course it could also be a completely new IP.
“Smilegate and Absurd Ventures will each leverage the strength of the other into new and sustainable business opportunities,” the press release reads.
“Smilegate will benefit from Houser and his team’s proven narrative, AAA game and business expertise in the Western market, while Absurd will benefit from Smilegate’s expertise in the Asian market. The two companies will pool each other’s strengths in areas such as online/live service, given Smilegate’s success with Crossfire and Houser and his team’s experience overseeing the wildly successful Grand Theft Auto Online.”
According to Houser, this partnership stems from “mutual respect and a philosophical alignment with founder [HyukBin] Kwon, and the great passion he and his team bring to making AAA games.”
For Smilegate’s part, the chief executive officer Joonho Sung said “We are thrilled to collaborate with the developers behind globally renowned series that have millions of fans worldwide.”
“Together with Absurd Ventures, Smilegate aims to deliver games that players across the globe will love. This partnership marks a critical milestone in Smilegate’s journey toward becoming a global IP powerhouse.”
Smilegate have been in the business of making giant multiplayer games its entire existence, while Dan Houser worked on GTA Online towards the latter half of his time with Rockstar, and made his career more on creating strong narrative-driven titles.
It’s easy to see the business sense of joining these two sides of a coin to work on something new, but it does re-adjust the expectations players should have from Absurd Ventures projects.
The first two projects, American Caper and A Better Paradise are a graphic novel and audio series, respectively, about two totally different things. Each of them perfectly in-line with the kind of art-house projects you’d expect from Houser’s new ‘venture.’
But something scalable to the point where Smilegate can get involved sounds like it could be destined to be another live service game that’s years late to the live service party by the time it comes out.
That’s just speculation of course, by the same token it could also be a hit. Either way, whatever flavour of live service or massively online game this project could end up being, if that is what Absurd is working on with Smilegate, it’s definitely not what people would’ve expected from Houser and his new team.
Source – [PR Newswire]