Nordisk Games buys 40% of latest Metroid and Castlevania developer

Via an official statement issued today, Madrid-based studio MercurySteam announced the selling of the 40% of its ownership to Danish company Nordisk Games, for an undisclosed but "considerable investment."

With the operation set in stone right before Christmas, the label, which at the same time is owned by entertainment company Nordisk Film (part of the Egmont group), becomes a major shareholder of the Spanish studio, which is currently working on "several new titles" based on its own technology.

MercurySteam was founded in 2002 and made a name for itself with Clive Barker's Jericho, which was published by Codemasters. From them on, the studio found success in the Castlevania: Lords of Shadows trilogy (published by Konami) and with Metroid: Samus Returns, which Nintendo published on the Nintendo 3DS. For the past four years, the studio has been focused on Spacelords (formerly known as Raiders of the Broken Planet), an ongoing asymmetrical third-person shooter for the last generation that was recently adapted to Xbox Series X|S.

MercurySteam's CEO and co-founder Enric Álvarez welcomes Nordisk Games "as a new partner," announcing "a new era of consolidation and growth for the studio", while Nordisk Games' senior partner Martin Walfisz considers the studio "one of the premier PC and console developers in Europe," teasing that "the games they now have in development are extremely promising and exciting."

Nordisk Games recently bought Avalanche Studios -the team behind the Just Cause series- as well as publisher Raw Fury, which recently released titles such as Star Renegades and Call of the Sea. The Spanish 160-worker team is actually the eighth addition to the organisation, the very first outside the Nordic territories.