Creative Assembly Sofia (formerly Black Sea Studios and Crytek Black Sea) is a Bulgarian video game developer based in

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and h ...

. It was founded in May 2001 by Vesselin Handjiev. In July 2008, the company was acquired by

Crytek Crytek GmbH is a German video game developer and software developer based in Frankfurt. Founded by the Yerli brothers in Coburg in 1999 and moved to Frankfurt in 2006, Crytek also operates further studios in Kyiv, Ukraine and Istanbul, Turkey. ...

, which then sold it to

Creative Assembly The Creative Assembly Limited (trade name: Creative Assembly) is a British video game developer based in Horsham, founded in 1987 by Tim Ansell. In its early years, the company worked on porting games to MS-DOS from Amiga and ZX Spectrum platfor ...

in March 2017.

History

Black Sea Studios was founded by Vesselin Handjiev, the lead designer of '' Tzar: The Burden of the Crown'', on 7 May 2001 in

, Bulgaria. At the time, the company began developing three separate games: two

real-time strategy game Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to pla ...

s and one arcade-style action game. The company became known for its 2004 title '' Knights of Honor'', a historical

real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to p ...

game released for Microsoft Windows, and for the 2008 science fiction real-time strategy title '' WorldShift''. In July 2008, German developer and publisher

announced their acquisition of the studio, and renamed it Crytek Black Sea. At the time, Black Sea Studios was based in Sofia, Bulgaria, with Vesselin Handijev was managing director. In May 2014, Crytek announced the development of their own

multiplayer online battle arena Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) is a subgenre of strategy video games in which two teams of players compete against each other on a predefined battlefield. Each player controls a single character with a set of distinctive abilities that ...

game using the

CryEngine CryEngine (stylized as CRYENGINE) is a game engine designed by the German game developer Crytek. It has been used in all of their titles with the initial version being used in ''Far Cry'', and continues to be updated to support new consoles and ...

, titled ''

Arena of Fate ''Arena of Fate'' is a cancelled free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed by Crytek Black Sea. The game was announced in May 2014, closed beta began on August 5, 2015. It featured five-against-five battles with lege ...

'' and under development at the Sofia studio. The game was shown at E3 2014. In November 2016, founder Handjiev, together with Michael Peykov, formed a new video game company, Black Sea Games. In December 2016, Crytek announced that it would shut down five of its international studios, due to financial troubles, of which Crytek Black Sea was put up for sale. In March 2017, it was announced that the studio was acquired by British developer

(itself owned by Sega), and was renamed Creative Assembly Sofia. At the time, Crytek Black Sea had 60 employees. Under Creative Assembly, Creative Assembly Sofia developed

downloadable content Downloadable content (DLC) is additional content created for an already released video game, distributed through the Internet by the game's publisher. It can either be added for no extra cost or it can be a form of video game monetization, enabli ...

for '' Total War: Rome II'', including ''Empire Divided'' and ''Rise of the Republic''. It also developed a new game in the '' Total War Saga'' series, '' Total War Saga: Troy''. In 2016, some of the people from Black Sea Studios founded Black Sea Games, which is now developing ''Knights of Honor II: Sovereign'', a sequel to '' Knights of Honor''.

Games developed

Cancelled

* ''

References

{{Crytek Bulgarian companies established in 2001 2008 mergers and acquisitions 2017 mergers and acquisitions Companies based in Sofia Crytek Sega divisions and subsidiaries Video game companies established in 2001 Video game companies of Bulgaria Video game development companies