Ascaron's Studio 2 Shuttered, Developers Let Go

It's been a rough year for Ascaron Entertainment. Following the company's filing for insolvency and the liquidation of many of its best assets to Kalypso Media, we now learn via the official Sacred 2 forums that Studio 2 (the subsidiary responsible for the PC version of Sacred 2 and its Ice & Blood expansion pack) has been closed. Apparently Ice & Blood was nearly finished, though, so we just might see the addon yet. Ascaron's Anca Adelina Finta:
It's true. The developers are saying goodbye. Today is the last day we have any developers.

Studio 2 is the subsidiary of Ascaron Entertainment. Ascaron died some months ago, but since Studio 2 was continuing the work at the Addon (which is almost done as I heard), it was not a big trouble regarding the development of the game.

With Ascaron we lost all the devs working at the console version, this was also the reason most of the questions here could not be answered.

Not only the developers will be gone after today, also Christiane and me will not be here anymore. We belonged to Ascaron and Studio 2 took us over as Ascaron was closed. This was just until the end of July, so today..

From now on, Koch Media will take over also the Community Management with their new CM (Cm Pixel). I'm sure, he will introduce himself here the next days.

The game will continue, the Addon is planed to come out and as I heard from Heiko tom Felde, the console version of the Addon is still a present topic. (this just to cover some questions which may come)

A big thanks to the mods who helped me to get the overview after Carolyn had to go. I will miss Stéphane with his 1000 questions about everything posed in his frendly french way, Lama8 who often pointed out my typos and gave me good advices, Jonnyx who I had to bother every time some tech issues popped up in the forum, Chloe44 with her lovely charm, Dobster who always managed to say the right thing at the right time and many more. All of you were something, I could never be able to manage the SiF forum without.

I will even miss the "hepl, canot conect" PMs.

It was a pleasure to be Community Manager here and I will miss every single day!

Before I get too melancholic, I stop here and say "goodbye". I'm sure we will meet again one day.

Farewell,

Anca

...

The devs and us hoped until the last day to find a way to continue. Sadly as it seems, there is noone.
As the devs started to post on the forum, it was clear for them, that they have to go. Christiane and me got the info yesterday evening, that a new CM will come and take over the forums. I wrote my "goodbye" post here just some minutes after I posted it there.

...

Yes, S2 will continue. I don't know if there will be new devs working on it, but the work around the current state of the game will be provided (as I got told from Koch Media).

...

Few of them will finish the last bit of the Addon before they go. As I heard, there is not much to do anymore.
Then Christiane Clarenbach steps in:
Mind if I hijack this thread...?

I am not so good with goodbyes, right now I am just really sad that this ended this way, and really sorry also that I didn't do more where maybe I could. I had hoped to tell everyone earlier, but as Anca stated already, we just heared last night on how it will continue.

*takes a deep breath*

Ah well. You know, I started this job back in 2004 when Mirko was still there. We did devchats together with you, it was the hell of a job in every possible way, especially a hell of fun!

I loved beeing part of this team and this community. Thank you everyone, especially the whole modteam, present and past, and of course our unforgettable DaGirl Carolyn: You all are a great and unique community, and I am glad I was allowed to accompany you for a short part of the way.

Yours,

Christiane
And, finally, we hear from lead audio designer Lars Hammer:
Don't worry, the add-on is already finished. A few devs will stay in the office and prepare the multilanguage master versions until everything is approved by Koch Media and the other publishers.

Regards,
Lars
Best of luck finding new jobs, guys.