GRIN becomes one of Europe’s biggest independent studios

Swedish developer GRIN has entered into a partnership with Streamline Studios, a Dutch content creation house, to ‘achieve greater flexibility and game development capacity’.

The developer, which is currently working on Bionic Commando for Capcom and a game based on the Wanted movie for Paramount, will ‘integrate processes’ with the firm, essentially increasing its headcount to 350 people.

The move effectively makes it one of Europe’s largest independent developers – second perhaps only to Jagex, the UK-based creator of Runescape, which has 400 employees.

"Streamline is a proven studio that has been through the publisher diligence process, and understands the expectations of AAA games having delivered on titles including Gears of War, Battlefield 2142 and Saints Row," said Bo Andersson, founder and CEO of GRIN AB.

"The goal is to consistently provide superior quality games that deliver fun, memorable experiences and we want to ensure that the publishers we work with are always getting our best product. Our relationship with Streamline provide us with the ability to further stabilise our production pipeline while raising our capacity to that of a 350 person studio."

The extent to which the two companies will operate is unsure, but it’s certainly far from the traditional outsourcer role that Streamline previously operated under.

Alexander L. Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of Streamline Studios, added: "GRIN has an amazing reputation for being one of the top studios in the world, and the opportunity to formalise our relationship and work even more closely together made perfect sense.

"From the beginning of our first project together, we knew there was a definite synergy between our companies. Both companies have extremely talented teams, excellent reputations for quality, and the ability to deliver on top properties, but it’s also a matter of personality, drive and attitude and we match incredibly well on all of these points."