Last Epoch developer Eleventh Hour Games has announced that it has been acquired by Krafton. The announcement was made through a post on the official Last Epoch forums by studio founder Judd Cobler. In his post, Cobler wrote about the humble beginnings of the studio, which simply started out as a group of action RPG fans on Reddit discussing their passion for the genre, and eventually grew into a dedicated Discord channel that then became Eleventh Hour.
Referring to the acquisition by Krafton, Cobler has noted that the future of Eleventh Hour is now much more secure. He has also referred to the acquisition as marking the beginning of a new chapter for the studio overall since the game launched the 1.0 version of Last Epoch back in 2024.
“After speaking with dozens of strategics and potential partners, Krafton clearly demonstrated that they’re aligned in helping us achieve our goals and can both enable and guide us through some of the largest upcoming challenges we’ll face as a studio,” wrote Cobler. “This partnership will allow us to deliver things we’ve only dreamed of previously and I’m excited to share details on those at a later date.”
After the acquisition, Cobler has also noted that Eleventh Hour Games will now focus on growing its team of developers in order to make more content and improvements to Last Epoch. However, he has noted that the studio isn’t yet ready to share details about what the acquisition means for the long-term content plans for Last Epoch, while also pointing out that Season 3: Beneath Ancient Skies is slated for launch on August 21, and that Season 4 will be released around four months after that.
“I started Last Epoch as an after hours passion project in 2017 where I took to Reddit to form a group of ARPG obsessed enthusiasts in the pursuit of making ‘The Next Great ARPG’,” wrote Cobler. “We were excited to come home from our day jobs and discuss, debate, and build the early stages of Last Epoch late into the evenings over Discord, eventually leading to our name “Eleventh Hour”. From there we brought our ideas and passion for what we wanted to develop through a successful Kickstarter, followed by Early Access, and years later launched Last Epoch 1.0 in early 2024.”
Last Epoch is available as a free-to-play game on PC. For more details, check out our review of its 1.0 launch.
This acquisition announcement comes in the wake of Krafton being in the midst of a legal battle with the co-founders of Subnautica developer Unknown Worlds. The lawsuit, which seemingly revolves around a $250 million payout that the co-founders have claimed has been withheld by Krafton, also claimed that the publisher had been engaged in a campaign to delay the release of Subnautica 2.
“Krafton engaged in a months-long campaign to delay Subnautica 2’s release,” reads the lawsuit. “It pulled key marketing materials, refused to follow through with crucial partnerships, and reneged on long-standing commitments to handle important pre-launch tasks.”
