Croatian developer and publisher Croteam, best known for its Serious Sam series of games, has been acquired by publisher Devolver Digital.

The pair have worked together for years now releasing several Serious Sam titles as well as the puzzle game Talos Principle.

It’s this long partnership that pushed the acquisition:

“Croteam and Devolver Digital have been dating for so long that we decided to go ahead and just get married. What’s certain is that our future together is ultra exciting with new projects like The Talos Principle 2, more Serious Sam games, and original IP from Croteam and the Croteam Incubator studios. Croteam will of course keep total creative freedom and Devolver Digital gets to keep making dumb recommendations that Croteam just ignores – we prefer it that way,” reads an announcement from Devolver.

The most recent game to be released by this partnership, prior to the acquisition, was Serious Sam 4. While some people enjoyed the game and the mindless fun the series is known for, it wasn’t received too well overall and many found it a bit underdone.

We’re not sure right now if this, combined with the fact that Serious Sam is only available on PC and Google Stadia, has anything to do with the acquisition.

Devolver Digital’s announcement about this news can be found here, but Croteam itself has also released a short statement.

“Devolver has always been more than a business partner for us. Our relationship with some of the key people from Devolver goes back to the very first days of the Serious Sam series. Our fates became finally intertwined a decade ago when we were looking for a partner we could trust. And trust Devolver Digital we did,” reads a part of said statement.

While publishers buying developers is usually a grim sign for the latter, Devolver has proven in the past to avoid many of the failings and greedy tactics of other publishers. We’ll need to wait and see if that’s a naïve statement, or the pair can work better with this arrangement.