Starbreeze Studios to acquire 90.5% of Dhruva Interactive in 8.5m deal

Swedish video game outfit Starbreeze Studios has made a deal to acquire 90.5% of one of the biggest game companies in India, Dhruva Interactive, in a deal worth a total of $8.5 million. The deal is expected to go through in the first quarter of 2017.

The $8.5 million deal is a mixture of cash and stock. $7m will be made up of cash, while $1.5m of the deal is Starbreeze Stock. As part of the deal, Dhruva will continue to operate under its own name and brand and can even work with third party clients. Dhruva is known as a specialist in art product and it has has been doing with recent work for several first party Xbox Titles including Halo 5 and Forza Horizon 3, but Starbreeze has also been a big client, with Dhruva being "the major part of the asset production" for their game Payday 2, whose continued success has provided a steady stream of revenue for the company.

Starbreeze are currently hard at work on several titles, including Overkill’s The Walking Dead, the Dhruva can slot into, but they’re also releasing their own VR headset, StarVR.

Rajesh Rao, Dhruva’s founder and CEO, said in a statement that "As part of the Starbreeze family, we will be able to add cutting ed VR content to our repertoire as well. It’s an extremely exciting time."