Ghost Ship Games

What Ghost Ship Games is

Ghost Ship Games is a game development studio located in Copenhagen, Denmark. Its own about page states that it was founded in the spring of 2016 by six veteran game developers and has since grown to a team of 60 people, made up of both industry veterans and newer developers. The studio says it set out to make games its members would enjoy playing themselves and to take co-operative play further, while avoiding development practices it had encountered elsewhere. A press information page for its game describes the studio's motto simply as Co-op First.

The company presents itself as small on purpose. Its site states that Ghost Ship keeps a deliberately tight team, works on getting material on screen quickly and avoids unnecessary overhead, and that it is always looking to expand with the right people. The same site describes the studio as a midsize competitor on PC, PlayStation and Xbox rather than a large publisher-owned label.

Deep Rock Galactic

Deep Rock Galactic is the title in our database connected to the studio. Ghost Ship Games describes it as a one-to-four player co-operative first-person shooter with fully destructible environments, procedurally generated caves and hordes of alien enemies, played as a team of space dwarves working for a mining corporation. A press information page describes the game in more detail as a four-player sci-fi co-op shooter set in procedurally generated, fully destructible caves on a hostile alien planet, where players complete missions and collect gold, gems and other minerals.

That press information page records that the game was developed by Ghost Ship Games and published by Coffee Stain Publishing, and that it reached full release in May 2020 after a period in early access. The studio's homepage states that the game has served more than ten million players and puts sales at more than four million copies so far across PC, PlayStation and Xbox. An older press information page lists 96 per cent positive user reviews on Steam and more than 2.5 million copies sold on Steam, figures that date from earlier in the game's life.

Ownership

Ghost Ship Games is not independent. A timeline on the studio's about page records that in July 2021 the parent company of Coffee Stain, Embracer Group, acquired Ghost Ship. The same timeline dates the founding of the company to April 2016, when six veterans from the Danish games industry came together with the goal of making a co-operative game. The studio continues to operate under its own name from Copenhagen, and it states that it avoided some of the development practices it had seen at other studios before setting up on its own.

How the studio works

The studio builds around a small team and open development. A press information page states that the goal is to make online games for players who invest heavily in them, with a focus on collaborative game mechanics rather than single-player content. On its Steam developer page the studio also describes itself as a publisher that helps other developers take their games through early access, alongside its own development work on Deep Rock Galactic.

Games

• Deep Rock Galactic
• Deep Rock Galactic - Dark Future Pack
• Deep Rock Galactic - Dawn of the Dread Pack
• Deep Rock Galactic - MegaCorp Pack
• Deep Rock Galactic - Rival Tech Pack
• Deep Rock Galactic - Robot Rebellion Pack
• Deep Rock Galactic - Roughneck Pack
• Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core

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