It’s the end of an era: Skyforge has been operating under the My.com/MY.GAMES banner since its launch back in 2015, but now it’s moving to a new home.
“[I]t is time to pass this incredible game into the caring hands of Innova,” the company announced today. “Later this year, MY.GAMES will no longer publish Skyforge, and Innova will become the sole publisher leading this game on exciting future journeys.” There’s no date for the transition given besides “in 2024”; the devs promise more info coming.
“This change is designed to be as seamless for our players as possible. We have full trust in the team at Innova and are sure that they will provide the best service possible. From our side, we will provide them with all the necessary support to ensure that all processes, from development to player support, retain the quality level established by MY.GAMES. The transfer process will take some time and will consist of several stages. We will keep you informed of the progress every step of the way and will do our best to ensure a seamless transfer. You can be sure that your data and progress are safe, and you can continue playing right where you left off after the publisher change is complete.”
The confusing part is that the new operator is listed only as “Innova,” shorthand for corporations that have come up multiple times in our reporting. Innova Games was at one point owned by Daybreak’s EG7 but was sold back in 2022 explicitly to disentangle itself from Russian business. At the time, Innova Games published multiple western MMORPGs in the CIS region; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine saw multiple international companies slash ties with their Russian subsidiaries to avoid sanctions. This would be the obvious assumption, since it’s already a games publisher, though we’re not sure how they’re pulling it off legally.
However, Innova Capital, a Polish private equity firm, has also come up in our reporting on MY.GAMES specifically. That’s because in late 2022, MY.GAMES likewise split up its holdings to extricate its western branch from its Russian branch. The new CEO characterized the newly created spun-out company, Astrum Entertainment, as an “independent Russian company,” though as we found out later, the MY.GAMES boss was also a founder of the Russian company – with Innova Capital being the controlling shareholder.
At this point, since the memo isn’t clear, we don’t know exactly what’s going on or how it will be legal, so we’ve reached out to our contacts – stay tuned.
“Skyforge was sold to the US-based company Music Guru, but MY.GAMES remained the publisher until the technical transfer of the game was completed. At the current moment we are about to finalize the transfer, our relationship with Music Guru is coming to an end. Music Guru, the new owner of the game, has informed us that the new publisher will be Innova. Consequently, we informed users about the change.”
This statement does not clarify which Innova company is involved here, nor how a Russian publisher is planning to service the western MMO. Our best guess right now is that Music Guru is going to publish it in the west (it’s already listed as publisher on Steam) and Innova is taking over the CIS version, but we’ve sent along follow-up questions for clarity’s sake.
