Acquisition by THQ
On January 15, 2008, THQ acquired the developer.[9]
On July 30, 2008, Grant Kirkhope joined the Big Huge Games team as an audio director. He had previously worked for Rare, composing for the Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark games (among others).[10]
On March 18, 2009, during the height of that year's Great Recession, THQ announced that due to declining economic conditions, it would close Big Huge Games unless an outside buyer could be found in the next 60 days.[11] As fate would have it, a buyer was found and the studio remained open, while THQ itself went on to file for bankruptcy in December 2012.
Acquisition by 38 Studios
On May 27, 2009, 38 Studios announced that it was acquiring Big Huge Games and retaining 70 employees out of approximately 120 who were at THQ.[12] Brian Reynolds left the studio for Zynga shortly afterwards.[13]
From mid-2009 to January 2012, Big Huge Games developed a single player role playing game titled Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which was released in early February 2012 and published by Electronic Arts (EA) and 38 Studios for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. The game is set in a fantasy world created with input from R A Salvatore and Todd McFarlane.
It was reported on May 24, 2012 that the studio and its parent company 38 Studios had laid off their entire staff.[14][15]
Briefly, it appeared that the remaining Big Huge Games development team had found backing to keep the studio, or some part of the studio, running. In June 2012, Epic Games announced the opening of a new studio in Baltimore called Epic Baltimore. The studio consisted of a significant portion of ex-Big Huge developers.[16] The nascent studio was later renamed Impossible Studios, but the reboot effort was ultimately short-lived and Impossible Studios officially closed on February 8, 2013.[17]
Revival by Reynolds and Train
In October 2013, it was revealed that Reynolds and Train had revived Big Huge Games, having reacquired the trademark at auction from the state of Rhode Island, which owned it following the bankruptcy of 38 Studios. This name was given to their new venture founded in 2013, which was formerly briefly known as SecretNewCo. In addition to Reynolds and Train, the new owners included Bryant Freitag and Dan Halka, both Big Huge Games alumni, and Vinh Trinh who had worked with Reynolds during his time as Chief Game Designer at Zynga, where Reynolds had spent much of the 2009–2013 years. More hires soon followed including many more alumni, and the new studio developed a mobile strategy game for tablets and smartphones called DomiNations, for release on iOS and Android.[18] It is published by Nexon's mobile gaming group.[3] and was released for Android and iOS in April 2015.[18]
The game experienced major success; as of March 2016, it had been downloaded over 19 million times, and Big Huge Games actively continues to run the game and develop features for it as recently as summer 2020.
Acquisition by Nexon
In the wake of DomiNation's successful launch, Nexon announced on March 9, 2016 that it had acquired Big Huge Games; the studio would continue to produce new titles and maintain DomiNations.[19]
Arcane Showdown, the next major game from the studio, was released in summer 2020 on mobile platforms and Steam. It was shut down on May 29, 2021.[20]
