'Getting the Band Back Together' - How Owlcat, Pathfinder, and MY.GAMES Have Reunited (2024)

Mobile gaming company MY.GAMES, founded in 2019 and based in Amsterdam, has announced the launch of a premium label, Knights Peak, and a slate of games the new label will be publishing. Alongside working with games like Starship Troopers: Extermination, Nicoderico, and Mandragora, Knights Peak is assuming publishing responsibility for Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Originally published by Deep Silver and developed by Owlcat Games in 2018, Pathfinder: Kingmaker was a Kickstarter-funded isometric RPG. It was also the first isometric RPG to be set in the Pathfinder universe developed by tabletop giant Paizo and was followed up in 2021’s Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which was also a Kickstarter success. Both titles were based on adventure paths for the tabletop game which included mechanics not normally featured in the system: the Kingdom Building and Mythic systems, respectively.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker Tells Knights Peak’s History

Owlcat and MY.GAMES go way back. In 2016, when Owlcat got its start, it was a subsidiary of Russian gaming label Mail.ru Games Ventures. When Pathfinder: Kingmaker hit the market, Owlcat was still part of Mail.ru, and partnered with Deep Silver as the publisher of the new game. The etch-a-sketch got a major shake-up in 2019, however.

Two major events happened in 2019. Owlcat struck out as an independent studio, and as a result, it lost the rights it had to Kingmaker. This led to development stopping on the game, and Owlcat no longer receiving royalties for sales. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, developed after Owlcat left Mail.ru, would be free from that problem. The other major event of 2019 was the founding of MY.GAMES. Formerly a brand operated by Mail.ru that managed Owlcat, MY.GAMES was now the consolidated gaming arm.

MY.GAMES got its independence in 2022, when Aleksander Chachava bought the company and moved it out of Russia to its current headquarters in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. This was the year that Owlcat and Deep Silver published Wrath of the Righteous to console audiences. Owlcat has also moved its headquarters out of Russia, now being based in Lakatamia, Cyprus.

The two formerly-related companies now meet again in 2024, where MY.GAMES’ new premium label Knights Peak will be working again with the Pathfinder: Kingmaker crew. As Knights Peak’s leadership told Game Rant, the new partnership for Kingmaker is a homecoming of sorts.

What we want to bring across is we’re bringing this game home. As you might or might not know, the studio Owlcat, who created this game, was part of MY.GAMES in the past … We are happy to have so many former members who worked on this game in the past and now we are bringing it home to Knights Peak, so we’re basically getting the band back together.

The new agreement may come as welcome news to fans of the indie CRPG sensation who’ve been unable to see the loose threads of Pathfinder: Kingmaker tied off due to the old conflict over studio rights. While not explicitly promised by Knights Peak, the new agreement would seem to open the door to patches for the game that players have spent almost half a decade waiting on, but that remains to be seen.

With the final patch of Wrath of the Righteous on the horizon, now seems like the right time to polish off Owlcat’s first adventure, but its future is also bright regardless.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Platform(s)

PC , PS4 , Xbox One

Released

September 25, 2018

Developer(s)

Owlcat Games

Publisher(s)

Deep Silver

Genre(s)

RPG

How Long To Beat

80 Hours