Warface devs split from Crytek to form Blackwood Games and take over all future development

Warface’s development team is forming its own independent development company, Blackwood Games. Led by studio’s creative director Michael Khaimzon, Blackwood will take over all further development of Warface franchise, including all previously announced updates.

“The development team of Warface has always inspired us," said Crytek’s CEO Avni Yerli. "To go independent in order to enable a closer partnership with the game’s publisher is a strategic move, which we all agree is best for the future of the game. At the same time, this reorganization will allow us to focus on our own core IPs and long-term plans."

"It was a tough decision to leave Crytek after all these years, but sometimes you need change to evolve. It’s very important for us to focus on developing Warface in a way that lives up to players’ expectations,” added Khaimzon. "We have kept the development team intact, and their expertise will allow us to move forward with our plans and ideas. Yet we’re very thankful to Crytek for all the great years together and for their commendable support of this move."

Warface publisher my.com recently announced that the game had hit the 5m registered players landmark for its console edition, which was released on PS4 and Xbox One back in September. Pretty impressive for a game that was released back in 2013 and even had an Xbox 360 version at one point.

"The key way to retain our audience is by continuous development of the project," Vasiliy Maguryan told MCV in an interview. "The current content plan extends for the future year-and-a-half – we release content updates on a monthly basis and every year there are one or two large PvE raid-based content updates. Every raid includes tons of new content – new gameplay elements, weapons, skins, achievements, etc. All that content is absolutely free for all our players. It’s also worth to mention our global events, that, apart from content, allow players to take part in a tournament.

"Console Warface development plan works exactly the same. As of right now it is developed and approved as far as the end of 2019. We plan to follow the plan and release at least one update every month and one or two major raid updates every year."

About Vikki Blake

It took 15 years of civil service monotony for Vikki to crack and switch to writing about games. She has since become an experienced reporter and critic working with a number of specialist and mainstream outlets in both the UK and beyond, including Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, IGN, MTV, and Variety.

Check Also

Q&A: Stefano Petrullo and Torsten Oppermann on Renaissance PR joining the 1SP family, and what creating a ‘superagency’ actually means

Renaissance PR was acquired by 1SP Agency last week. We checked in with both companies to ask some questions about the acquisition, and what it’ll mean for them going forward