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Kunos Simulazioni Sold To Digital Bros
In a press release, the Italian Digital Bros Group announced that they are in the process of buying out Kunos Simulazioni who you know as the developer of the popular Assetto Corsa title.
The Digital Bros Group is an Italian gaming industry Publisher/Distributor with offices in United States, Greater China, United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Germany. Digital Bros were already connected to the Kunos Simulazioni studio as they are the owners of the video game publisher 505 Games who are the distributor of the console version of Assetto Corsa.
It is reported that the Digital Bros Group signed a preliminary agreement to pay out 4,341,500 Euro in order to acquire 100% of the shares currently owned by Kunos Simulazioni founders Stefano Casillo and Marco Massarutto. The payment will be partly cash (2.75 million euro) and partly as 150,000 Digital Bros shares.
Update! – Marco Massarutto replied.
Ok, let’s clarify this before it becomes the bigger flame of the year.
By today, Kunos Simulazioni is part of Digital Bros Family, and me and Stefano by today are shareholders of Digital Bros. That’s it. We are still the founders of Kunos, we are still IN, also keeping our respective positions and responsabilities, with just few exceptions: the budget we’ll manage by now doesn’t come anymore from our personal profits, but from Digital Bros, our bigger AC fan. Keeping the same policy, strategies, DNA, development team, goals. So, if this news would not been made public, you couldn’t realize that something is changed, because – by a gamer/simracer point of view – nothing is going to change.
The reason why this news comes like a bombshell is because Digital Bros is a listed company, therefore this kind of operation must a) kept confidential until the negotiation is over, b) go public when is done. That’s it.
For whom are afraid that today a piece of their simracing world has gone, let me remind them that Digital Bros has published – under its label 505Games – the console version of Assetto Corsa, and it doesn’t seem to me that AC on PS4/XB1 is an arcade game: definetely it isn’t. Therefore, before to scream in any direction that “Kunos has been bought, The World is Over”, please sit down, breath and think. Because the only news you should be interested is that by today, we have more resources, time and power to do our job, even better than before.
So: think easier, live better, stay strong. The Future is Bright.
Have a nice weekend
Original Press Release:
Download
With the limited info from Digital Bros and no official statement from the Kunos Simulazioni staff, it is hard to say how this takeover will affect the future of Assetto Corsa and if current owners Stefano Casillo and Marco Massarutto will stay with the company. Should they leave, we are sure the Assetto Corsa community would be gutted.
Whatever the outcome may be, we can only congratulate Stefano, Marco, and the entire Kunos Simulazioni team. They are truly the little developer that could…
| Official Webpage – www.assettocorsa.net |
