"Some of the best games of the last decade came from teams of fifty": Destroy All Humans! remake devs Black Forest Games split from THQ Nordic to launch new indie studio group

"We're excited to shape our own future as owners again"

Black Forest Games, developers of the Destroy All Humans! remakes, have spun out of Embracer Group-owned publishers THQ Nordic via a management buyout and announced plans to form a new "developer-driven group" of independent studios. The new group, dubbed Third Signal, will aim to "give teams the independence, resources and creative freedom" to "bring their own ideas to life".

Black Forest, based in Germany, announced the move in a press release. "We are grateful to THQ Nordic and Embracer for nine good years and the games we made together," co-boss Adrian Goersch said. "Now, we're excited to shape our own future as owners again, to work on an exciting new project with a great team and strong partners behind us."

"Some of the best games of the last decade came from teams of fifty, not five hundred," added Third Signal founder Andreas Tobler. "Black Forest Games is one of them, and the right studio to launch Third Signal. Our vision is to build a developer driven group and give teams the independence, resources and creative freedom to continue their creative legacy and bring their own ideas to life." As of writing, Third Signal's website is just a logo splash which promises something coming soon. To be fair, it does also look to have an email address, plus legal and privacy notices. Black Forest's management team will become a co-owner of the studio group as part of this move, but "continue to collaborate on game development tasks" with THQ Nordic.

Black Forest had been in the embrace since 2017, releasing both 2020's Destroy All Humans! remake and Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed in that time, plus DLC Clone Carnage. Over the years they've also made multiple entries in the Giana Sisters platformer series, survival game Fade to Silence, and 2017's Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back.

That's a right old mix of stuff, but the biggest names in it are all resurrections of series or characters created by other folks back in the day. Pandemic Studios in the case of Destroy All Humans!, Accolade in the case of Bubsy, and Germany company Time Warp in the case of Giana Sisters. That makes the fact it sounds like this move'll give Black Forest a bit more creative freedom intriguing. Here's hoping that if they do plan to try and get some more of their own original ideas off the ground, rather than trucking on with a steady diet of remakes and revivals, they manage to stick the landing. It's all fine declaring that a 50 person team can make a top game these days, but that certainly doesn't mean it's in any way easy to pull off.