Krafton is buying Hi-Fi Rush from Microsoft, but there's no acquisition cost of Tango Gameworks

Krafton executive Maria Park reveals more details on the company's plans for Tango Gameworks, and the logistics around the Japanese studio's resurrection.

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In May, ZeniMax/Bethesda shut down Tango Gameworks, the studio behind games like The Evil Within and Hi-Fi Rush. Then Krafton, the publisher responsible for the mega-popular battle royale PUBG, swooped in to save the day. But Krafton didn't actually buy Tango Gameworks. Instead, the South Korean publisher just offered Tango's developers a new place to work.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Krafton VP of corporate development Maria Park explains how this actually worked, and confirms that Krafton is still in negotiations to buy the Hi-Fi Rush IP from Microsoft.

"In terms of team integration, it's not a typical acquisition case. They've already shut down the studio. So we hired back everybody. It was more like a migration to Krafton from ZeniMax. So there wasn't an upfront acquisition cost in regards to the team transfer. But when it comes to IP acquisition, we are still in discussions with Microsoft," Park said.

Krafton will hire around 70-80 of the original Tango Gameworks team, which was composed of 100 people. The publisher will then make more hires to fill in the gaps and return Tango to its 100-person team.

Park also confirmed that Tango's other IPs, including Ghostwire Tokyo and The Evil Within, will stay with Microsoft. Krafton chose Hi-Fi Rush because it was creative, and also negotiating for 3 IP buyouts would be a more time-consuming process.

Interestingly enough, Krafton did not specifically aim to integrate Tango for profits alone:

"We've done the simulation and they should be self-sustainable. When we decided to integrate Tango into Krafton, we weren't expecting a huge commercial hit from the studio. We have huge respect for the studio's capacity to create new IPs. Krafton's mission is to scale up the creative," Park said about Tango's overall profit/revenue structure.