Today, multimedia publisher and entertainment company Dark Horse Comics has revealed Dark Horse Games (“DHG”), its new gaming and digital division. With two main offices in Oregon and Shanghai, DHG’s mission is to create unique experiences — both through close licensing partnerships with the industry’s best game makers and its own in-house, first-party titles — inspired by Dark Horse Comics’ diverse portfolio of over 425 story-driven characters and universes. Over the company’s history, Dark Horse has published such world-renowned IPs as Hellboy, Frank Miller’s Sin City and 300, Umbrella Academy, Polar, Lady Killer, Emily the Strange, Usagi Yojimbo, Resident Alien, and many more.
“We’ve spent the past thirty-five years developing a long list of original, fan-favorite IP with many of the best partners in digital entertainment. Now is the perfect time to expand our vision into gaming,” said Dark Horse Comics founder and President Mike Richardson. “Dark Horse Games gives us exciting new ways to engage with fans of all kinds on a multitude of platforms.”
Dark Horse Games is currently in discussions with some of the world’s top gaming studios to create AAA licensed titles based on Dark Horse Comics’ vast library to be released over the next several years across all platforms, including PC consoles mobile, and cloud-based services. Meanwhile, DHG’s first-party games will focus on refreshing older and less established IPs as gaming first IPs. DHG will also produce and release multimedia projects (e.g., webtoons and anime) in conjunction with the first-party games. DHG is in active discussions with the world’s top game co-development studios and content production studios, with the first of these in-house projects already in production.
“Dark Horse Comics sits at the intersection of consumer entertainment, production, and publishing. We’re one of the few companies that own IP nimble enough to execute coordinated strategies across multiple platforms, and that’s a huge advantage in gaming and digital,” said Dark Horse Games General Manager Johnny B. Lee.
