Amplitude Studios, developers of many a game with “Endless” in the name, have split with publisher Sega to become independent again, with ownership of the studio reverting to its original founders and “other members of the team”. The developers say everyone is parting “on good terms” and that the last eight years of getting published under Sega has been “amazing”. But there are other businessy reasons, of course. Namely, Sega have been trying to trim down their European studios for the past year, and Amplitude is just the latest bunch of devs affected by that.

To give you some context, Sega have been “restructuring” their European games studios since around September 2023 (amid other layoff hijinks in the US). This has meant layoffs at Creative Assembly and the sale of Relic, developers of World War II strategy game Company Of Heroes 3. Today’s “management buyout” of Amplitude, which sees the studio handed back to its original owners, is just another step in this process, it seems.

The announcement of the sale was included in a financial document published today by Sega, which reports an extraordinary loss of 5.9 billion yen (about £29.9 million or $38.7 million) due to the sale of the strategy game developers. Sega say “this marks the completion of the series of structural reforms”. But of course, we have heard things like that before from other corps which proved to be untrue. Stay frosty, is what I’m saying.

Meanwhile, Amplitude made their own announcement of the buyout, framing it as a return to being an indie studio, which does have its advantages to be fair. For example, they say the creative direction of the Endless games are now fully in “the hands of those who know them best.”

“This decision allows us to be more agile in our approach,” said studio co-founder Romain de Waubert de Genlis, “while continuing to shape the vision that has been ours from the very beginning.”

This doesn’t rule out more turbulence for the studio – the publishing environment remains somewhat ruthless – but at least the companies part on relatively amicable terms. For background, Sega acquired Amplitude in 2016, and at the time the studio’s leadership was happy about that, saying they liked “how [Sega] treat their internal studios”.

I do hope it’s a smooth transition back to indie life. The studio’s past games include the Endless Space series, Endless Legend, and most recently the nifty sci-fi twin stick shooter Endless Dungeon, which I liked enough to call it one of our best roguelikes. They also continue to work on their big 4X strategy game, Humankind, which is a “heavyweight competitor to Civilization”, according to our Nate (RPS in peace). In other words, they make some pretty good games. I hope their launch out into the free seas of game publishing goes well. It’s choppy out there.

Sega, for their part, have not been very fun today. They are also delisting 60 classic games from Steam, including Crazy Taxi and Streets Of Rage. Boooooo!