Merge Games shutting down after 15 years

Merge Games

Indie games publisher Merge Games has announced they’re closing their doors after publishing games for over a decade. The publisher released indie hits like Dead Cells and Darkest Dungeon.

A now-deleted post was made to the Merge Games social media account, confirming their 22-person team has been laid off and their publishing company is shutting down.

Not long after that post was made, it got deleted and replaced by a new post by parent company Maximum Entertainment. The new post makes no mention of layoffs and instead says Merge Games has been integrated into Maximum Entertainment.

“After 15 years of operating under Merge Games, we are now integrated within Maximum Entertainment,” the publisher said. “The games you’ve come to love, and those you look forward to will now be coming from Maximum Entertainment.

The now-former community manager at Merge Games, Tom Griffith, replied to this statement claiming Maximum did lay off 20 staff and only kept a few staff to manage sales.

“Hey, minor correction, Merge wasn’t integrated into Maximum,” Tom said in a post. “You laid off 20 people today and kept 2 people on to manage sales! You also deleted this post with 1k likes, just a heads up for clarity!”

Here’s the original message from Merge Games:

Hello! After 15 years, Merge Games is closing down.

Starting from a tiny, cramped attic and growing to a tight, multi-disciplined 22 person team, we’ve brought hundreds of indie gems to storefronts around the world and loved every minute of it!

We couldn’t have done it without people passionate about indie games, from all of our developers all the way to you folks, the players!

If you see someone from Merge, just know that they’re an incredible person that worked their hardest.

Thank you for the many years of gaming!

Regardless of whatever actually happened with Merge Games, all current and upcoming published games will be handled by Maximum Entertainment moving forward.

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