Lithuania-based mobile games developer and publisher Nordcurrent has acquired River End Games the game studio based in Gothenburg, Sweden, “broadening its vision beyond mobile games into PC and console”.
River End Games was founded in 2020 with investment and support from Amplifier Game Invest, part of the Embracer Group. Primarily a console and PC developer, the company is headed up by gaming veterans Jonas Nordling, Anders Hejdenberg and Karl Broström, who collectively bring experience working on such famous games as Battlefield and Need for Speed for EA.
The team has been smaller award-winning titles like Unravel and have created several original IPs. The studio has been working on an as-yet unannounced single-player game for PC and consoles which will now be released by Nordcurrent Labs some time in 2025.
Nordcurrent have clocked up over 500 million downloads of its games to date. Its portfolio includes popular casual F2P games like Cooking Fever, Airplane Chefs, Pocket Styler and Murder in the Alps.
River End Games will continue to operate as a separate entity from Nordcurrent’s existing offices, with no changes to its day-to-day business. The studio has been working on an original single-player game for PC and consoles for launch sometime in 2025; with this acquisition, the plan is for the game to now be published by Nordcurrent Labs, the publishing arm of Nordcurrent.
Expansion beyond mobile
“River End Games team joining Nordcurrent is a big step in our strategy to expand beyond mobile gaming, where we have had a decade of success with games like Cooking Fever and millions of engaged monthly players,” said Victoria Trofimova, Nordcurrent’s CEO and co-founder. “There is a lot of innovation happening in the PC and console ecosystem, and I’m looking forward to Nordcurrent and River End taking an active role in this evolving market,”
“At River End Games, we’re a small but passionate group of people who love games and live to create them. Our goal is simple: to bring world-class experiences to gamers. In Nordcurrent, we’ve found a kindred spirit and long-term partner that shares our passion. We are very excited about this new partnership and can’t imagine a better ally to help us create worlds and stories that gamers will remember long after they’ve put the controller away.” said Jonas Nordling, River End Games’ CEO.
