Disney has sold both FoxNext Games and Cold Iron Studios, two gaming studios acquired when it purchased 21st Century Fox. This news may not be especially surprising, considering Disney has been pretty clear it never wanted much to do with gaming, opting instead to license its IPs out. Both studios have been sold to Scopely, a mobile game developer behind several mobile games hits such as The Walking Dead: Road to Survival and WWE Champions. It was noted that Scopely will not be getting the IPs the developers worked on, instead, Disney retaining the right to licenses them out to Scopely or other developers.
FoxNext Games was mostly a mobile games studio, developing mobile games based on IPs like Futurama, Marvel, The X-Files, and more. However, it did develop PlayStation VR first-person shooter Crisis on the Planet of the Apes and was the publisher behind the narrative game Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier. Cold Iron Studios was owned by FoxNext Games and had not actually published any video games yet at the time of purchase. However, they were working on a shooter set in the Aliens universe for PC and consoles. Because they don’t work on mobile games, Scopely says it plans to sell Cold Iron Studios after the purchase. There’s no word on what will happen to the Aliens shooter, though it seems doubtful that it will continue.
Disney also acquired several other game developers when it bought 21st Century Fox, although there’s currently no word on what’s happening to them yet. One of the acquisitions was Fogbank Entertainment, a new studio started by Fox that was going to develop an episodic narrative game based on one of Fox’s properties. However, it seems doubtful that Disney is going to want to hang onto Fogbank and see those plans through.
[Source: Variety]
