Full-service game development studio Blind Squirrel Games has acquired Distributed Development, a service-based studio in Colombia that will be renamed Blind Squirrel Games Colombia.
Irvine, California-based Blind Squirrel Games is known for titles like Bioshock: The Collection and Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. It’s also working on the upcoming original studio game Cosmorons.
The new hub expands Blind Squirrel’s reach to Manizales, Colombia (about an hour’s flight from either Medellin or Bogota, and it gives Blind Squirrel Games more of a global footprint. It now has teams in California, Texas, and New Zealand, enabling the studio to fulfill a strategic business goal of providing cost-effective, premium triple-A development services.
“Blind Squirrel Games Colombia marks an important milestone for our studio as we celebrate our 15th anniversary,” said Blind Squirrel Games CEO and Founder Brad Hendricks, in a statement. “We’ve grown into a worldwide network of development excellence, increasing not just our capacity, but our creative POV and technical capabilities to provide incredible value to our partners. With Blind Squirrel Games Colombia working hand-in-hand with our other teams, we’re now able to deliver unmatched efficiency in addition to market-leading innovation for all of our projects.”
Formerly operating as Distributed Development (known for its deep software development expertise with clients such as Microsoft), Blind Squirrel Games Colombia will continue to be overseen by its previous studio head, Eric Herrera, who takes on the role of studio director.
“Over those 15 years, we’re really trying to set the standard for excellence in video game development. We really pioneered what I would say is the co-development space. We bridge the gap into the triple-A space. And now we’re really focusing not only that co-development effort, but we’re also looking at creating original IP,” Hendricks said in an interview with GamesBeat.
Hendricks said the company is now trying to make a name for itself as a brand. And it’s expanding into the world to hire new talent it can find around the world.
“We were lucky enough to work with Eric’s team in Colombia on a project we were on with Playside, and it had a very successful launch, and we got a chance to work with him for a year or year and a half,” Hendricks said. “I thought they were super talented, a solid group of engineers, and so we approached them about an acquisition. Eric was amenable to it and and there you have it.”
Based in the growing video game development community of Manizales, Colombia, Blind Squirrel Games Colombia looks to expand significantly in 2025 to 25 to 30 employees in a new location within the city. It is a young studio that can hire a lot of university graduates in a place where gaming still feels fresh.
By contrast, Blind Squirrel Games is based in the U.S. and is in its 15th year as a boutique studio working on high-quality games. It has 98 people now and will likely grow to around 140 in the coming months.
“We’ve had the pleasure of working closely with Blind Squirrel Games over the past year on the multiplayer co-development for the PlaySide Studios title, Age of Darkness: Final Stand and other projects to explore a potential partnership,” said Blind Squirrel Games Colombia Studio Director Eric Herrera. “As our teams easily collaborated with one another, it became clear that formally joining forces would be mutually beneficial. Beyond our studio initiatives, we also look forward to also playing a central role in nurturing and growing talent in the region.”
Herrera said in an interview with GamesBeat that working together with Blind Squirrel Games was a “fantastic experience at every level.” They found that Blind Squirrel’s team had talented engineers and producers that made things so much easier.
“When working together, it was like the synergy was amazing from from the start, then at the next level, we found the leadership here,” Herrera said. “The leadership team really makes it a point to care about the individual. We were contractors. We were not even employees, and they cared so much that we were pretty much amazed.” “
He noted that the Blind Squirrel team evaluated the individuals (for things like health and well being) at Distributed Development and offered feedback. They used mature processes and balanced both quality for the customer and respect for the interests of those working on projects, Herrera said.
“This is something that you wouldn’t find easily. We’re part of a breeding ground for great game ideas and products. I’m really excited that at some point we will be able to participate in the process of creating original IP,” Herrera said.
“Under Eric’s indelible leadership, his team has produced amazing work and custom-built technology,” added Hendricks. “We’re excited to push the boundaries of what we’re able to create together.”
Specializing in engineering innovation, Blind Squirrel Games Colombia has pioneered an Unreal Engine-based AI tool that’s being implemented across the studio’s systems globally. The proprietary tool looks to optimize project output efficiencies, including reducing port completion times.
The acquisition has closed with terms not publicly disclosed. Hendricks said there are some secret projects he can’t talk about, including brand new IP. The growth is rare in gaming at the moment. It’s not dramatic, but compared to the last two years, it’s an improvement, Hendricks said.
One of the games that Blind Squirrel Games is working on is State of Decay 3, a title that will be published by Microsoft.
There are big rivals out there like Keywords and Virtuos with thousands of employees working on external development.
“We’re on a lot of projects right now that require multiple outsourced teams and Keywords is always part of a lot of those projects that we’re on. So we’re coexisting fine. I think we carve out our niche and each team sort of does their thing, and we do ours,” Hendricks said. “We’re very heavy in design and production management and engineering. Everybody has their niche, so we’re all working together collaboratively.”
The Cosmorons game has gotten good feedback so far from the community, with a 70% positive rating. And the Xbox version does not yet have co-op that will be important to players.
“We’re going to build an audience over the course of the next several months, through an early access approach on Steam,” he said. “We’re going to continue to expand on the project itself, as well as get feedback from the community about what features they’d like to see. And then hopefully sometime next year, we’ll try to go full launch.”
One of the benefits of working in Colombia is that the labor doesn’t cost as much — perhaps a third of the cost in California. But Hendricks said his team could have opened a new studio in many other places that likely would be cheaper. The reason it clicked well with Distributed Development is that the team was very talented, Hendricks said.
Herrera’s team got its start a decade ago and it has worked on games like Age of Darkness: Final Stand, as well as other projects for Nickelodeon. It worked on GI Joe Black Ops, and then Herrera’s firm also worked on its own internal IP, which was a social trading card game.
Much of the talent comes to the university and then leaves for jobs in other regions. But Herrera wants to convince folks to stay in the area and get jobs in gaming.
“We believe Eric can do find the talent,” Hendricks said.
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