Gearbox Entertainment has announced the acquisition of Lost Boys Interactive. Lost Boys has previously worked on games like Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, WWE 2K22, Call of Duty, and PUBG: Battlegrounds. Its team is made up of 220 employees, bringing Gearbox’s total headcount up to 1,300.
Lost Boys intends to continue its growth over the coming years. The studio is targeting 350 team members by 2024 to aid its goal of creating “amazing games that entertain,” according to CEO Shaun Nivens. Nivens also goes on to say that the acquisition is “incredibly exciting.”
Founder of Gearbox Entertainment, Randy Pitchford, seems equally excited about what Lost Boys can bring to the table. He describes the developer as an “incredible studio with industry-leading talent.” Pitchford highlights Lost Boys’ “world-class development” as one of its biggest selling points.
Following this takeover, Lost Boys will most likely take up a supporting role. Its strength has always been collaborating with AAA studios to create ambitious games. Gearbox owns the rights to Borderlands, Duke Nukem, and Brothers in Arms, so Lost Boys will probably work on at least one of those franchises. Although, it isn’t out of the question that a team of its size could be given a bigger role and asked to develop a new IP.
A diverse line-up?
A problem that Gearbox has had for over a decade now is that it relies too heavily on Borderlands. Many of its most successful games have been part of that long-running franchise. Even its more recent efforts show this. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a Borderlands spin-off and it just announced that a Tales From the Borderlands sequel is coming.
In 2016 it did try something radically different with Battleborn, but the result was a huge failure. Overwatch was released three weeks after, and Battleborn plummeted into irrelevance. It stopped receiving updates in 2017 and was shut down in 2021. With Lost Boys’ talent acquired, hopefully the publisher may soon bring out another hit franchise.
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