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Deep Silver is an Austrian video game publisher and a division of Plaion.
Deep Silver first gained widespread attention with their release of Dead Island and their acquisition of Volition. Dead Island had been their first release to reach the top spot on sales charts in September 2011, and they acquired Volition in January 2013, alongside the rights to the Metro series, from the bankruptcy proceedings of THQ. Deep Silver also acquired a minority interest in Berlin-based free-to-play game developer Infernum Productions in December 2012. In February 2013, Deep Silver announced its intentions to expand into the mobile games market.
In December 2013, Fishlabs, which had filed for self-administration the previous October, was acquired by Koch Media and became Deep Silver's dedicated mobile game studio. As the agreement was an asset deal, the legal entity of the studio was dissolved and Fishlabs was reorganised as a division, officially known as Deep Silver Fishlabs. In July 2014, Deep Silver acquired the rights to Homefront and its in-development sequel, , from German developer Crytek. Dambuster Studios (officially, Deep Silver Dambuster Studios) was established to continue the development of The Revolution, succeeding Crytek UK. Later on the same day, Crytek announced that Crytek UK would be closed, and all of its staff transferred to Dambuster Studios. In August 2018, Koch Media acquired the rights to the TimeSplitters games, which would be overseen by Deep Silver.
In May 2020, Koch Media and THQ Nordic, by this time both part of Embracer Group, exchanged several intellectual property rights: Deep Silver received Red Faction and Painkiller, while handing off Risen, Rush for Berlin, Sacred, Second Sight, and .
In May 2021, Deep Silver and Koch Media, part of Embracer Group since 2018, announced that Free Radical Design had been re-founded. Work on a new part of the TimeSplitters series is to begin before the end of 2021. In November 2022, Volition was transferred to Gearbox Entertainment, another company under Embracer Group. In December 2023, Free Radical Design was closed down amidst a widescale company restructuring from Embracer Group.
In January 2019, Deep Silver partnered with Epic Games on a one-year exclusivity deal for the PC game version of their upcoming game Metro Exodus on Epic's digital distribution storefront, the Epic Games Store. Through this deal, Metro Exodus was removed from Steam, another digital distribution storefront, where Deep Silver had been selling for the game since August 2018. Additionally, the deal was made and announced less than three weeks prior to game's release, causing criticism and confusion among critics and fans of the Metro franchise. Valve, the company behind Steam, labelled the move as unfair to consumers, while fans Review bomb previous entries of the series on Steam.
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