Indie games allow developers to be creative in a variety of ways, usually without the restrictions of big AAA companies or brands. That said, there are still quite a number of indie game publishers, such as TinyBuild, who help get certain games out there along with making them successful franchises if possible. One of these was after the acquisition of the Hello Neighbor developers in 2020, which helped the horror title spawn a spin-off and an upcoming sequel. TinyBuild announced another acquisition of a popular series of IPs from Bossa Studios, such as Surgeon Simulator.
Surgeon Simulator is a curious duology of games from Bossa Studios, a game developer located in the United Kingdom. The first game saw viral success in 2013, bolstered by Let's Players who were making content revolving around how obtuse the design was. This saw a surprise sequel with Surgeon Simulator 2 across several platforms, including Xbox Game Pass. Other IPs that were involved in this acquisition include I am Fish and I am Bread, with Games Industry.biz reporting an upfront payment of $3 million for the IPs.
With this acquisition, TinyBuild shall be the developer working on these IPs, while Bossa Studios will be focusing on other projects and games. According to Bossa Studio co-founder Henrique Olifiers, this acquisition was due to Bossa expanding its production on various co-op PvE titles. He states that TinyBuild was the best choice to leave its legacy to, with the aforementioned IPs like Surgeon Simulator being the best fit for TinyBuild, stating that the publisher understands "what makes these games tick" as well as the original dev team.
The official TinyBuild Twitter account posted that the team was happy to acquire the rights to these IPs, and also announced that it has acquired the Russian developer Konfa Games for $5.4 million as well. Konfa Games was responsible for Despotism 3k which was released in 2018, with a roguelike tactics game known as Despot's Game leaving early access and will be released this year. Moreover, this acquisition will see the team move to join TinyBuild in Serbia.
According to Games Industry.biz, the franchises from Bossa Studios had earned the studio $6 million in revenue during 2021. TinyBuild itself reported $52.2 million in revenue for 2021, which is a 39% increase from the previous year. Hopefully, TinyBuild's entries can capture the same silly and chaotic nature of the original games going forward.
Surgeon Simulator is currently available on Android, iOS, PC, PS4, and Switch.