Halo, co-developer of Hogwarts Legacy, Certain Affinity becomes the latest acquisition from Keywords Studios

Certain Affinity, the co-development studio behind Hogwarts Legacy, a shelved Halo Infinite battle royal game and an early version of the Perfect Dark reboot, has been acquired by Keywords Studios.

In a press release posted on its website, Keywords announced it would purchase certain Affinity for an undisclosed amount. Keywords now employs 180 people in the US and Canada, working on “a number of announced and unannounced projects”, including Exodus from Archetype Entertaiment, Last Expedition with Gala Games and an original FPS codenamed Project: Loro. According to the press release, Certain Affinity will continue to be led by existing management, including CEO Max Hoberman and President and COO Paul Sams.

Certain Affinity is best known for its collaborative development work, dating back to the studio's founding in 2006 by former Halo developers. Since then, it has continued to work as a supporting studio on the Halo series, as well as Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Doom (2016) and others. Project: Loro is the first completely original new project.

Back in April, certain Affinity laid off 25 employees, or 10% of its workforce, citing industry-wide slowdowns in financing and investment in new lead and co-development projects as the main reason.

This is Keywords Studios' second acquisition in 2024, following its acquisition of Wushu Studios back in August. The company itself has been quietly building a huge portfolio of studios and companies under its label since 2014, its own studios include Alan Wake Remastered co-developer D3T, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Marvel's Avengers co-developer Heavy Iron Studios, Luigi's Mansion 2 HD developer Tantalus Media, co-developer of the Age of Empires series Forgotten Empires, Hollywood production services company Blindlight and PR agency Fortyseven Communications, among many others. Keywords acquired at least four companies per year between 2016 and 2023. According to the annual report, Keywords employed over 13,000 people worldwide at the end of 2023.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her post on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Do you have a story tip? Send it to [email protected].