Polish Studio Behind ‘Silent Hill’ Remake Plans Original Games

(Bloomberg) — Few expected a small Polish studio like Bloober Team SA to do justice to Silent Hill 2 with their remake of the survival horror classic. Yet the game turned out to be one of last year’s biggest hits, selling two million copies in just four months while winning award nominations and critical acclaim.

The game has been a windfall for the 17-year-old outfit and its founder Piotr Babieno after starting out making low-effort games for quick cash. Shares of Bloober have surged more than 13% since Silent Hill 2’s release, and last year earnings grew sevenfold to about $6 million. Fresh off that success, the studio is returning to the franchise with another Konami Group Corp. collaboration — a remake of the series’ 1999 debut title, which is already in production

Not content with just doing remakes, Babieno is now looking further afield. His 250-person studio is slated to release its first shooter-horror hybrid this year. It’s also working with fellow Polish developers on five horror titles with a target 2027 release. They’re all original ideas, which amount to bold bets in a games industry increasingly obsessed with sequels and live-service games like Fortnite.

“We would like to create Bloober Team as the most impactful horror house in the world,” Babieno told Bloomberg News during an interview in Beijing, where he was attending game exhibitions. “Making your own IP will be challenging and expensive if you would like to deliver the same quality. But for game designers, it’s like raising a kid, something coming from your heart.”

In Cronos: The New Dawn, you play as a time-traveling agent fighting monstrosities in a sci-fi wasteland version of 1980s Poland. Bloober’s spin on the action-horror genre is that players have to keep monsters from merging with one another even after slaying them. Babieno said the premise is a metaphor for our times. “We are in information bubbles and those bubbles are sometimes connecting and sometimes not.”

Bloober is now preparing for the roll-out of Cronos on console and PC before the end of the year. The game drew inspiration from thriller films and horror franchises like Resident Evil. But for Babieno, the remastering of Silent Hill 2 — which began production about 10 months ahead of Cronos — has paved the way for Bloober’s developers to take on its first original mass-market horror game.

Bloober has come a long way from its origins as a tiny outsourcing studio with no specific expertise. It got its name from a rushed business registration while developing a title called Double Bloob for the Nintendo DSi handheld.

Babieno, who played the original Silent Hill 2 multiple times through different phases of his life, eventually decided to settle on psychological horrors, or walking simulators where players explore a haunted house or dark forest and solve puzzles. Bloober’s productions in this sub-genre have received mixed reviews. “We are trying to learn from our mistakes,” said the former reporter and marketing executive. “It’s not revolution. It’s like evolution.”

While reimagining Silent Hill 2 was a dream come true for Babieno, convincing Konami to partner on the project wasn’t easy. Bloober lacked a proven track record producing the complicated combat gameplay action-horror games are known for. Babieno said his first pitch to the Japanese conglomerate came as early as 2015, followed by years of on-and-off discussions. When the tie-up was officially announced in 2022, it took many fans by surprise.

Another gaming giant that saw Bloober’s potential was Tencent Holdings Ltd. In 2021, Tencent acquired a 22% stake in the Polish studio, becoming its largest shareholder. The investment adds to a long list of bets the WeChat operator made in up-and-coming games developers in Europe, ranging from Baldur’s Gate 3 maker Larian Studios and Alan Wake studio Remedy Entertainment Oyj.

Tencent will help Bloober market Cronos ahead of its China launch, said Babieno, who last week traveled with a Tencent representative to Shenzhen and Beijing. “They are a minority investor, but they are one of the most supportive companies which I ever met in my life,” he said.

Back at home in Kraków, Babieno said most of his designers are either crafting the Silent Hill 1 remake or planning the studio’s next original title, which he promised won’t be a sequel. He’s also assembled a team of less than 40 people to work with third-party studios on the development of new games that mix horror elements with other genres like strategy and role-playing.

Such collaboration, Babieno said, would free Bloober’s core team to focus on what they do best — story-driven, single-player horror games that sell copies. “We would like to work with the best in their own niche.” 

— Mark Anderson and Zheping Huang

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