Epic buys Gears of War: Judgment developer People Can Fly

Epic Games has made an honest studio of Gears of War: Judgment dev People Can Fly, five years after acquiring the majority stake in the company. Epic head Mark Rein said the studio buy-out led to the departure of three PCF studio heads: Adrian Chmierlarz, Andrzej Poznanski, and Michal Kosieradzki.

"We doubled down on People Can Fly," Rein said. "It was something we always hoped to do."

But we'll be hearing more from at least one of those names, as Rein also told Polygon that Epic will be "helping [Chmierlarz] with some future announcements."

Rein says the company had "a really cool prototype, awesome art and design" when Epic found them, and handed them the PC version of Gears of War. That led to other Gears of War ports, Bulletstorm, and now Judgment. Reign says the absence of the three departing figures won't impact Judgment's development.

This comes just on the heels of Epic buying and re-branding the former Big Huge Games to Impossible Games. It's one of five subsidiaries, including Chair, Epic Japan, and Epic Korea. Most of them are constantly developing games, and Epic always has its popular Unreal Engine to fall back on. So when Epic takes over the entire gaming industry and you're playing on your EpicBox, remember this year as the one they began to consolidate power.