Sumo Group Acquires Auroch Digital In Latest Notable Gaming Takeover

It's been a year with multiple major takeovers in the gaming industry, with Microsoft, EA and Tencent being notable companies investing in acquisitions. Today brings an example of how these acquisitions filter down to small but successful publishers and developers, with Sumo Group confirming an acquisition of Auroch Digital for ' at least £6 million ($8.32 million).'

Auroch Digital has developed and published some enjoyable titles on Switch in recent years, including The Colonists and Mars Horizon; the latter is a rather detailed and fascinating simulation of the space race. Sumo Group 'considers Auroch's 48 staff a complementary development team to support Secret Mode', which is the group's own publishing division. Nevertheless Auroch will retain its name and continue to be led by company founder Tomas Rawlings.

Sumo Group, of course, was confirmed in the Summer to be the target of a $1.27bn (£919m) takeover by Tencent, while in recent months we've also seen EA acquire Codemasters, and of course Microsoft picked up Bethesda (along with its parent company ZeniMax and the many related subsidiaries). Just recently Sony also acquired Firesprite, a company that had made notable PlayStation titles in recent years.

Nintendo has been somewhat less splashy in terms of high-stakes acquisitions, but did formally buy-out Next Level Games earlier this year, which had been working effectively as a 'second-party' beforehand on the likes of Luigi's Mansion 3.

Sumo Group picking up Auroch Digital is another acquisition for the books, then, and no doubt there'll be more notable takeovers - big and small - in the coming months.