Whoa! Eleventh Hour Games has announced that it has officially joined forces with Krafton, the South Korean publisher best known for PUBG: Battlegrounds. The acquisition marks a major moment for Last Epoch, a game that began as a passion project and has grown into one of the most promising titles in the Action RPG genre. While the team at Eleventh Hour Games has made impressive strides on its own, founder Judd Cobler says this new partnership will give them the resources and backing needed to take Last Epoch even further.
Cobler's announcement, seen in full below, recalls the origins of Last Epoch back in 2017 when it all started, quite humbly, by looking for other obsessed enthusiasts of the genre to make "The Next Great ARPG". From Reddit to Discord to Kickstarter to their 1.0 release last year, Last Epoch has certainly worn its community roots with pride. What's wild though is they're only just getting started.
Judd states that joining Krafton wasn't a decision that was made lightly. He has spent the past year speaking to "dozens" of potential partners for the studio, which landing of Krafton meant closely aligned visions for the future of Last Epoch and not just funding - but being able to deliver the things that they have only dreamed of previously. We're told in the comments of the announcement by the founder himself that Krafton is not going to be pushing any new monetization on the game or changing how the company wants to hire new devs which is a positive.
The announcement is tight-lipped on the future of Last Epoch, but we're going to assume this means larger updates, even more amazing systems, and support for many, many years to come. Season 3: Beneath Ancient Skies launches August 21st, and Season 4 release will be roughly 4 months after that (December).
Quote From Moxjet200 Travelers,
Today I have some very exciting news to share about the future of Eleventh Hour Games and Last Epoch.
As many of you know, I started Last Epoch as an after hours passion project in 2017 where I took to Reddit to form a group of ARPG obsessed enthusiasts in the pursuit of making “The Next Great ARPG”. We were excited to come home from our day jobs and discuss, debate, and build the early stages of Last Epoch late into the evenings over Discord, eventually leading to our name “Eleventh Hour”. From there we brought our ideas and passion for what we wanted to develop through a successful Kickstarter, followed by Early Access, and years later launched Last Epoch 1.0 in early 2024. It’s been an adventure of constant learning, struggles, excitement, grit, and undying enthusiasm. Starting a gaming company with no funds or game development experience is quite the adventure.
Although we have created something now enjoyed by millions, we are far from done with our mission. While we’ve done well punching above our weight, we know that to truly execute on creating the absolute best ARPG experience available it will require continuing our aggressive growth of the last 7 years. We are no strangers to growth as EHG has gone from me, with zero funding working out of my kitchen (easy access to late night snacks) to a team of over 100 amazing people working on the game. We’ve been vetting potential partners over the last year, and we’ve finally found the right one to empower our studio and help us complete our mission.
Today I’m excited to announce that Eleventh Hour Games is joining Krafton, the powerhouse behind PUBG, who shares our passion for the action RPG genre and is ready to help fuel our efforts in raising Last Epoch to new heights. With this partnership we will have the opportunity and resources to execute on our goal of creating the very best ARPG in the genre.
After speaking with dozens of potential strategic partners, Krafton clearly demonstrated that they’re aligned in helping us achieve our goals and can both enable and guide us through some of the largest upcoming challenges we’ll face as a studio. This partnership will allow us to deliver things we’ve only dreamed of previously and I’m excited to share details on those at a later date.
I rarely reflect on the journey as we’re still very much in the thick of it, but it’s nearly unbelievable that with only a dream and unyielding pursuit that we’ve reached this new epoch 167 and now know that the future of the franchise is secured for bigger and better things. All while getting to supply great remote jobs for these passionate, amazing people that share in the excitement and vision for what we’re accomplishing.
With this news I’m excited to say that EHG will be hiring many roles in the near future. If you’re still reading this it’s likely that you have an interest in this genre of game which means we have an interest in you. If you think you have the skillset to help build The Next Great ARPG you can check our hiring page 1.2k that we’ll be appending new open roles to over the coming weeks and months.
We know there are going to be questions about what this means for upcoming content/roadmap. We’re not ready to share anything there yet, but just a reminder that Season 3: Beneath Ancient Skies launches August 21st, and our Season 4 release will be roughly 4 months after that.
Thank you to our fans and the ARPG community that we come from. EHG will continue to be what it always has been - the studio of ARPG enthusiasts that rose up from the community with one goal in mind - to make the ARPG we’ve always dreamed of playing. We’ll continue to listen, engage, and craft the best experiencers we can for all of us - now with more wind under our wings.
Cheers,
- Judd Cobler, Founder of Eleventh Hour Games.
Additionally, we have further confirmation that Krafton isn't looking to make changes to the company, but rather enabling Last Epoch to do the work they need to do to make the game the best it can be.
Quote From Moxjet200 Resources and industry guidance, mostly! Krafton isn’t looking to change us - we went out seeking a partner and they were the most aligned in the mission and enabling us. Developing these games are way more expensive than most people think with 100 heads, server expenses, tooling, etc. This is very positive for the team and franchise’s future.
They said the same thing to Unknown Worlds, and then they fired their founders…
We’re aware of the situation with Unknown Worlds. I don’t want to comment on it directly but after understanding it more deeply it isn’t something that concerns us entering into the partnership at all. There’s plenty of misinformation or partially informed parties talking to that situation. I appreciate your concern for us though - cheers.
…..
As an acquisition they have ultimate authority but they’re trusting us to continue growing like we have been. They don’t want to direct the game, monetization, hiring, or anything if we can handle it as we have been. Now I assume if we ended up falling off a cliff in terms of sales or growth they’d have more interest in correcting failure, but so would we. But they’re not looking to come in and throw wrenches into what’s working, they’re looking to enable growth under our direction which is to their benefit.
We've also got word that we can expect performance optimizations coming!
Quote From Moxjet200 Met, if this is an ask for performance and optimization improvements for the game I assure you we have some big stuff coming in that regard.
We made a big’ol tangley mess out of asset loading when we were a smaller team that we’re unraveling right now which will give us a lot of optimization gains. We have a great third party helping with the effort now, but again those contracts are expensive and a move like this enables us to do those things without risking financial insecurity for the studio.
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