Hawken acquired by Reloaded Games

Multiplayer mech shooter Hawken has been given a new lease on life with the announcement that Reloaded Games has acquired rights to the troubled title.

The creation of indie dev Adhesive Games, Hawken was confirmed as a free-to-play multiplayer title back in February 2012. Based on the Unreal Engine, the game boasted a faster pace than most giant mech titles with gameplay that acted as a cross between Quake III Arena and MechWarrior. With a $10 million investment, things looked rosy - but post-launch troubles hit the title, and there have been questions raised over its long-term prospects. Publisher Meteor Entertainment hit financial difficulties in 2014, and the closure of its Seattle office left players wondering if the game was being quietly retired.

Thankfully for anyone who has enjoyed the title, a deal has been struck which sees Reloaded Games take ownership of Hawken. 'Just to confirm, yes, Hawken is here to stay. I'm pretty excited to now be able to announce that Reloaded Games is the new owner of Hawken,' Joshua Clausen explained on the game's official Facebook page. 'It’s a seriously great honour to be a part of the Hawken story, and I want to see it thrive.'

Clausen has confirmed that Reloaded Games will be starting by addressing some of the biggest outstanding issues with the title, starting with restoration of the forum, the fixing of a password reset bug, and numerous back-end and deployment developments. 'New updates and future changes' visible to end-users have also been promised, but with no firm schedule announced.

Player reaction to the news has been extremely positive, and with Reloaded having experience in this area - having taken shut-down multiplayer title APB from Realtime Worlds and successfully relaunched it as APB: Reloaded - things look significantly rosier for fans of the game.