Team17 – known primarily for developing and publishing the Worms games – has been Black Matter’s publisher for Hell Let Loose, but it seems the success of the game has seen the former investing further in the game. It’s been announced that Team17 has fully acquired the Hell Let Loose IP.

The acquisition involves an initial sum of £31 million, in addition to contingent payments of up to £15 million. Team17 says it will look to “create additional opportunities to extend the lifecycle” of the game, which should include “further downloadable content and ongoing support as well as exploring potential sequels and other commercial opportunities.”

Team17 also says it’s creating a new “core gaming label”, and that Hell Let Loose is going to be the first game under that label. This label, according to the company, will “utilise dedicated funds providing a specific focus to source the best core-gaming content across the globe.”

Team17 CEO Michael Pattison said: “We are delighted to be announcing the acquisition of the Hell Let Loose IP. Hell Let Loose has quickly become a highly credible and innovative multiplayer tactical first-person shooter supported by a very passionate and highly engaged community with over six million players. Having built a close and extremely productive relationship with Black Matter already, we believe that by bringing Hell Let Loose into the Team17 stable, we can serve and build upon the needs of an ever-growing community, improve and expand upon the existing player experience and develop new ways to entertain and delight. We firmly believe Hell Let Loose can become the definitive large-scale team-based military simulation.

“This acquisition represents an important next step in our strategy to expand our ownership of IP that is not only of the highest quality, but importantly has long-term growth potential.”

Black Matter founder and CEO Max Rea said: “This is a wonderful opportunity for our fans and a logical next step-up in the development of Hell Let Loose as a brand. Team17 love our brand and community as we do, which has expanded across multiple platforms successfully. We’ve worked very closely with our good friends at Team17 over the last several years and firmly believe that this acquisition is the next logical step to enable us to further deliver great content to the highly passionate HLL community, as well as find new ways to engage and entertain in the future.

“We are really excited to continue to work with Team17 on the next stage of growth for Hell Let Loose.“

Hell Let Loose is currently available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Black Matter has previously said that it has no plans for PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game.

Speaking to The Loadout, Black Matter CEO Max Rea said there are no real plans at this time to bring the game to PS4 and Xbox One. While he didn’t rule out the possibility, he said getting the game (which was never really designed to be on consoles) up and running on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S was a challenge already. He said for now, the complexity of downporting is a no-go.

“If I’m shooting from the hip, I would say no just to give kind of a hard and fast answer. What you see on console is a result of us having to really live develop the game during our early access period. And then also as a result of taking a game that wasn’t built with console in mind, and then trying to make it work on console.”

Hell Let Loose is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Those who are subscribed to PS Plus can redeem the PS5 version for the month of October, which you can read more about through here.

An interesting point worth noting is that Hell Let Loose‘s cross-play implementation is that it only works on console, and PC players wouldn’t be able to play with console players. Of course, that’s largely understandable since PC players will obviously have an advantage from aiming with the mouse – and sorting that out requires quite a bit of rebalancing in competitive natured games.

Cross-play is quickly becoming one of the most requested features in any multi-platform game, and it’s certainly great to see developers like Black Matter catering to the request of fans. Implementing it can still be cumbersome, given Sony and Nintendo’s stances and associated policies on the matter.

Cross platform play will be coming to Hell Let Loose on console, between PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles.

We'll be keeping PC and console separate though.

— Hell Let Loose (@hell_let_loose) August 18, 2021

Hell Let Loose started development as a hobby project at Black Matter way back in 2015, and the game entered Steam’s early access program in 2019 following a successful Kickstarter campaign. After a plethora of updates to the game over time, Hell Let Loose will finally be launching as a full game on July 27th, with a new update adding more gear and maps to the game.

Hell Let Loose has sold more than a million copies during its Early Access period, and a constant drip-feed of new content should keep players hooked. E3 2021 is far from over, with a plethora of conferences and events slated for the coming days, so stay tuned for all the latest updates.