‘PUBG’ owner Krafton acquires ‘The Ascent’ developer Neon Giant

Krafton, the company behind battle royale title PUBG: Battlegrounds, has announced that it is acquiring Neon Giant, the developer of cyberpunk action-shooter RPG title The Ascent.

• READ MORE: ‘The Ascent’ review: just good enough, and that’s okay
  

The announcement was made during Krafton’s latest earnings report, in which they revealed that Neon Giant is currently working on an open-world FPS game. However, Krafton provided no further information about the title.

According to Krafton, the acquisition of Neon Giant is a part of the company’s investment in “its development and service capabilities to ensure a steady pipeline of premium titles.”

The Ascent proved remarkably successful when it first released back in July last year, launching on PC, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One. The cyberpunk title topped $5million (£3,591,025) during its launch weekend alone – a figure that doesn’t factor in any additional revenue the developer received for launching the game on the Game Pass subscription service.

It has proven popular enough that the developer has succumbed to fan demands and is bringing the game to PlayStation, with a PS5 and PS4 version of the game being rated by the US Entertainment Software Rating Board earlier this year.

Despite this popularity, Jake Tucker was more guarded in his praise of the game in his three-star review for NME. Tucker described The Ascent as feeling “like a William Gibson novel. Not because it’s instantly a staple of the cyberpunk genre, but because it rips off every trope of Gibson’s particular aesthetic to create a world that looks incredible, but ultimately has nothing new to say.”

Tucker praised the game’s combat, describing it as “just good enough” but ultimately felt that “as soon as the combat stops, the game becomes a real slog.”

In other gaming news, God of War: Ragnarok is the franchise’s biggest launch in the UK, having just released earlier this week on November 9.