Warner Brothers buys Turbine for $160 million.
The headline:
That says it all basically. Turbine, one of the biggest privately owned MMO developers is no more. For those of you that don’t know, Turbine is responsible for Asheron’s Call, the now defunct Asheron’s Call 2, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and Lord of the Rings Online. 3 out of 4 is pretty darn good.
None of their games really suited me, but in the 1-2 months I played LOTRO it definitely seemed like a quality game.
Congratulations to Turbine I guess… I imagine the primary shareholders and founders made a nice chunk of change. Personally, I am sad to see another gaming studio that had at least SOME independence get gobbled up.
Well, maybe this just creates more opportunity for the indie studios. What do you think?
If you had to be gobbled up by any big corporation in the entertainment field, it would probably be Warner Bros. Of all the major music labels, they have the reputation as being the most “artist-friendly”. We’ll see if that transfers to developers as well.