In 2024, Ziff Davis restructured Humble Games and laid off every single member of staff. This week, those same people bought the company back. That's not a metaphor.
Former Humble Games head Alan Patmore and COO Mark Nash had already set up Good Games Group in 2024, initially brought in to manage Humble's back catalogue and in-development titles under a sub-licensing agreement. Eighteen months later, they've completed a full acquisition of Ziff Davis' publishing business, picked up the entire Firestoke catalogue after that publisher closed last year, and rebranded the whole operation as Balor Games. The name comes from a Celtic three-eyed creature, which is either a clever nod to their "triple-I" publishing focus or just a very good bit of branding. Probably both.
The acquisition puts over 60 titles under the Balor banner, including Slay the Spire, A Hat in Time, SIGNALIS, Forager, Coral Island, Monaco, and Wizard of Legend. That's a serious back catalogue for a company that is, technically, still relatively new. Patmore acknowledged as much, noting that Balor is already operating at the scale Humble Games took three or four years to reach. The financial terms of the deal with Ziff Davis weren't disclosed, though Patmore said both parties were happy with the outcome.
What Balor Actually Wants to Be
The pitch Patmore and Nash are making is a "triple-I" publisher, a term the industry keeps redefining depending on who's using it. For Balor, it means high-craft, high-ambition games that don't necessarily need AAA budgets. They're open to projects ranging from a couple hundred thousand dollars up to tens of millions, which is a wide enough net to be meaningful without being meaningless. The more interesting commitment is the one to developer autonomy. Nash told Game Developer that Balor isn't chasing scale for its own sake, and that every publishing relationship will be structured around what each individual project actually needs.
That's easy to say. The track record here at least gives it some weight. Patmore and Nash spent years at Humble Games working with the developers now in their catalogue. When Patmore says "this moment is a reunion," he's not writing marketing copy from scratch; he's describing a situation where the same two people who published your game are now the ones who own the rights to it again. For studios like Mega Crit or the team behind SIGNALIS, that continuity matters more than any press release language about creative independence.
Balor has also signed its first new project under the new name: SCP: 5K, a co-op tactical horror shooter from Affray Interactive that has been in Early Access on Steam since 2022. It's a deliberate signal about the kind of games Balor wants to build communities around, which Nash specifically flagged as a priority. Not just multiplayer games, but games that generate sustained player investment over time.
The indie publishing space has had a rough couple of years. Firestoke is gone. Humble Games, as it existed, is gone. The fact that the people who ran it managed to reconstitute it, buy back the catalogue, and add to it within 18 months is either a story about resilience or a very efficient acquisition strategy. Probably both. Either way, developers pitching new projects can reach Balor directly at balorgames.com, and given who's running it, that inbox is worth filling.
Want to see more? Catch all the latest gaming news, updates, and patch notes right here at XP Gained!
