NCsoft buys City of Heroes IP

By Games Industry.biz Published 7 November, 2007

CoH blimey.

Cryptic Studios has sold its intellectual and proprietary rights to the City of Heroes and City of Villains franchises to MMO publisher NCsoft, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

The IP ownership was previously split between the two companies. As part of the new agreement, NCsoft is licensing Cryptic's engine technologies for use with future games.

"City of Heroes and City of Villains players should be assured that Cryptic Studios will be working closely with NCsoft to ensure a smooth, seamless transition," said Michael Lewis, president and co-founder of Cryptic Studios.

"City of Heroes was Cryptic's flagship product and we are proud of this title and the many millions of characters that have entertained over a million people worldwide.

"The decision to sell the franchise allows us to focus resources on our soon to be announced first-party projects."

NCsoft said that it has acquired key members of the City of Heroes design team from Cryptic, and plans to expand the franchise. It has opened a new development studio staffed by those Cryptic team members in Mountain View, California.

"Our plans are clear," said NCsoft executive producer and new studio manager Brian Clayton. "We are now in a position to make a major reinvestment in the City of Heroes product line."

Only a month ago, NCsoft unveiled Carbine Studios, which is working on an unannounced MMO. NCsoft also be developing games for the PSP and PS3.

Those are the headlines. God, I wish they weren't.

Picture of Games.

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Comments (5) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • dk_rare #1 4 years ago

    Wow, first

  • Jos #2 4 years ago

    "NCsoft also be developing games for the PSP and PS3."

    Nice Pirate ending. Just missing an "Oo arr."

  • Quine #3 4 years ago

    "NCsoft also be developing games for the PSP and PS3."

    Fo' real!

  • zozart #4 4 years ago

    Oh Eurogamer... every once in a while you come up with a tagline that makes every one else in the office look at me for laughing so much.

  • Olemak #5 4 years ago

    Good news, this. I hope they will annnounce a real expansion soon (seeing as City of Villains is a "side-by-side, stand-alone game" or something, and not really an expansion). This is still a great game, good to hear that NCsoft thinks enough of it to build a studio around it!

    Also - a good thing that Cryptic is now able to focus fully on their Marvel MMO, with no chance of tripping over conflicts of intrest and intelectual property issues etc. Hopefully, they got paid a huge wad of money for this; would be interesting to know just how much.