Deep Silver Closes Vienna Studio

Developer Deep Silver Vienna has shut down and its 20 employees will need to find new jobs at the end of March, says parent company Koch Media. The studio's two co-founders, formerly of Rockstar Vienna, had already left, according to Austrian media reports; Niki Laber apparently departed in December 2009, while Hannes Seifert left his role only recently, and will become a creative director Square Enix. Deep Silver Vienna began as Games That Matter, which Seifert and Laber founded after Rockstar Vienna was closed. Koch Media acquired Games That Matter in 2007 and incorporated it into its Deep Silver games label, which is headquartered in Munich and also has offices in the UK, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and the U.S. As a whole, Deep Silver has published or co-published numerous titles, and its best-known are PC games like Risen, Sacred 2 and Stalker: Clear Sky. Deep Silver Vienna's most recent release developed in-house was Wii horror title Cursed Mountain, which met with mixed reviews -- praised more for its atmosphere and less for its controls -- and had little marketing support. Cursed Mountain is still set to launch on PC next week, and the studio's other project in development, Ride To Hell, will reportedly be completed at Koch's Munich headquarters and launch in 2011. "This decision is not easy for us," said Koch Media managing director Kundratitz Clement in a press statement citing "the current overall economic situation" for the need to consolidate operations in Munich and close the Deep Silver studio.