Limbo dev Playdead buys itself back from investors

Having sold shares in itself to fund Limbo, developer Playdead has now been able to buy itself back, after the acclaimed goth puzzle-platformer went on to the top of the XBLA charts.

Playdead started off funding Limbo itself, also picking up a grant from the Nordic Game Program, but ambitions exceeded cash reserves and it ended up needing help from investors too.

"We are really happy about how it turned out even though the cost was higher than we had hoped," CEO Dino Patti told Edge. "The process was very educational and this is a big step on our way to become fully independent."

Limbo was originally released for Xbox Live Arcade in July 2010, followed by a PlayStation Network edition in July 2011 and a Steam launch earlier this month. It's presently the second-most-downloaded XBLA game of all time.

It'll be a fair while before we see the next Playdead game, though. Explaining that "a good game takes time," Patti recently said that its new project "will take at least three and a half years."