Moon Studios Buys Back Publishing Rights to No Rest for the Wicked

The divestment of Private Division from Take-Two Interactive has taken Moon Studios by surprise. After lengthy negotiations, the Austrian studio has now bought back all publishing rights to No Rest for the Wicked.

After a long period of silence, Vienna-based Moon Studios has spoken again about the future of the company and its current game, No Rest for the Wicked. The game was released in Early Access on 18 April 2024 with Private Division, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, as publisher. In November 2024, Take-Two decided to sell Private Division, which came as a complete surprise to Moon Studios. At the time, it was stated that Take-Two would retain the publishing rights to No Rest for the Wicked.

The studio's two founders, Thomas Mahler and Gennadiy Korol, saw this change as an opportunity. After months of negotiations they reached an agreement to buy back the publishing rights to No Rest for the Wicked, making Moon Studios fully independent. "This legal process took time, and we couldn't say much while it was all happening. But today, we're excited to announce that it's all done and that Moon Studios is now fully independent," the two studio founders said. However, no further details have been given.

They were also able to talk about the future of their action role-playing game. On 30 April 2025, almost a year after the launch of Early Access, the big content update 'The Breach' will be released. After that, the developers want to work on the cooperative multiplayer mode. "After the co-op update, we'll be following up with more improvements and new systems. We'll expand Sacrament, improve housing, introduce farming, expand the Crucible and of course, finish the campaign with more story and more quests and bosses. And we are very much aware that a lot of you finally want to play No Rest for the Wicked on all major consoles," said Moon Studios.

Finally, it was announced that Gareth Coker will be working on the music for No Rest for the Wicked. Coker has already composed the soundtracks for Moon Studios' other two games: Ori and the Blind Forest (2015) and Ori and the Will of the Wisps (2020).

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