Sony is continuing its expansion of first-party studios with the recent acquisition of Valkyrie Entertainment. The Seattle-based developer has worked on a number of popular projects including League of Legends, Halo Infinite, and God of War. They currently appear to be involved in the upcoming God of War: Ragnarok.
Founded back in 2002, Valkyrie Entertainment has offered support to multiple AAA companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Warner Bros. Beyond getting help with God of War, Sony recruited Valkyrie to work on past projects like Infamous 2 and Twisted Metal. Meanwhile, Microsoft had the developer aid them on the first five installments of the Forza Motorsport series. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment teamed up with Valkyrie to work on Batman: Arkham Origins, Injustice 2, and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War.
News of Sony’s acquisition was announced on Twitter by the head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst. In a brief tweet, Hulst welcomed the studio to the “PlayStation Studios family” and shared that they would be “making invaluable contributions to key PlayStation Studios franchises.” The addition of Valkyrie Entertainment brings PlayStation’s internal team of first-party studios up to 17.
The acquisition of Valkyrie comes just a few months after Bluepoint Games and Housemarque joined the PlayStation Studios family. After the Bluepoint Games news broke, Hulst gave some insight to IGN about the internal growth of PlayStation Studios. He shared that the studios being added to Sony’s roster “have to have a very collaborative mindset [and] need to be quality-oriented... We are not buying teams just to be bigger.”
Before adding Housemarque to their roster this summer, the last big addition was in 2019 when Sony purchased Spider-Man developer Insomniac Games. After gaining Housemarque, Sony went on to add Nixxes Software and Firesprite as well as Bluepoint to their growing family. The sudden change in pace for Sony could have something to do with Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda in late 2020 or it could be on account of the recent rumors that PlayStation will be unveiling a subscription service to rival Xbox’s Game Pass sometime next year. Time will tell.