Former Funcom, Lockwood Publishing, and Bohemia Interactive leaders establish Red Rover Interactive to evolve survival genre

Red Rover Interactive, a new studio headquartered in the Norwegian capital Oslo and Newcastle in England’s North East, has announced its establishment. It was founded by games industry veterans who collectively worked on games such as Conan Exiles, Dune Awakening, DayZ, Avakin Life, Crysis 2, Ryse, and Ghost Recon.

The developer’s initial plans are to utilize its collective experiences working with successful multiplayer-focused intellectual properties to “catapult the survival genre in a new direction, putting player agency and drama front and center.” In the long term, the developer hopes to “create the most novel and engaging multiplayer experiences on the market.”

“We believe multiplayer interactions are fundamentally more powerful than player-versus-environment ones,” said Red Rover Interactive CEO Fred Richardson in a press release. “This is something most persistent online games don’t leverage, often being built as single-player experiences that support many players. We plan to lean into this, starting with the survival genre which we are intimately familiar with, taking it in a genuinely new direction.”

Red Rover Interactive is led by the following staff:

• CEO Fred Richardson (previously at Funcom, Ubisoft Reflections)
• COO Joe Stevens (previously at Lockwood Publishing, Ubisoft Reflections)
• Design director Marek Zilavy (previously at Bohemia Interactive, Funcom)
• Technical director Daniel Ratzer (previously at Funcom)
• Art director Sebastian Zimmermann (previously at Nordeus, Jagex, Crytek)

The studio’s foundational team consists of 17 members, most of whom have previously worked together. It has already secured significant seed investments from Behold Ventures and The Games Fund, as well as other participating investors such as Lifelike Capital, GEM capital, Acequia Capital, and a suite of angel investors, coming in at just under $5 million.

Red Rover Interactive is currently hiring. Visit the official website here.