Little Orbit has acquired the online game portal GamersFirst and the company’s game licenses such as the massively multiplayer online games APB Reloaded and Fallen Earth.
It’s a notable acquisition for Little Orbit, who has largely focused on licensed games for entertainment companies like Cartoon Network in the past, but also a momentous moment (and, the publisher hopes, a turning point) in the complicated history of APB Reloaded.
Originally released in 2010 as All Points Bulletin, the game was later relaunched as the free-to-play game APB Reloaded after its original developer Realtime World shuttered and Reloaded Productions, owned by GamersFirst, purchased the rights to the game.
However, APB Reloaded has had its own share of troubles in the years since coming under GamersFirst’s control, something that Little Orbit CEO Matthew Scott addressed on the game’s developer blog following the acquisition announcement.
“There’s been a lot of speculation over the last couple months about who would be crazy enough to take on this game. And I’m not going to try and sugarcoat it, we know that the confidence in this game is at an all time low, and odds are you haven’t heard of us at Little Orbit,” wrote Scott. “But that’s OK. There’s a lot of work to do, and I’m not writing this letter to make unrealistic promises or layout a grand roadmap. Instead, I’m going to ask for your patience as we get organized and that you give us a chance to show you that we are sincere in our efforts to make APB Reloaded the game we all know it can be.”
In the blog post, Scott notes that his company is updating GamersFirst to make the website compliment with the European Union's coming GDPR legislation and plans to upgrade APB Reloaded to Unreal 4 in order to enable longterm support, content updates, and operational changes.