Crysis creator Crytek has officially acquired Black Sea Studios, a Bulgarian company known for its historical PC real-time strategy effort Knights of Honor and the upcoming sci-fi RTS WorldShift.

Under the deal, Black Sea has been renamed Crytek Black Sea. The financial details of the buyout were not disclosed.

"Black Sea Studios already has a very qualified and experienced development team in place and will be continually expanded in capacity to join our tradition of producing highly innovative and creative games which Crytek is known for," explained Crytek managing director Avni Yerli.

It is unknown what effect the acquisition will have on the development of WorldShift, which was announced a PC exclusive. Due to piracy concerns, Crytek has stated that the company will no longer develop PC-only titles following Crysis: Warhead this fall.

What do you get when you combine Diablo and real-time strategy? Hopefully, you get this game. In addition to the standard single-player and online versus multiplayer components, developer Black Sea Games is adding cooperative dungeon-crawling missions to its upcoming sci-fi RTS. I met with publisher RTL Games earlier this week for an initial look. We've also got a screenshot gallery and a small concept art gallery.

Black Sea hopes players actually take advantage of the three allowed co-op slots--these missions aren't designed to be completed alone. "It's like an MMO where you have to know your tactics. We don't expect players to beat a dungeon the first time through," said Andreas Balfanz of German publisher RTL Games. "But one of our developers went through with two players and was still able to beat it with the right tactics."
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