A brief recap of the developers' journey to IP2 being the coders

bluewolf
bluewolf Posts: 6,896 Chairperson of the Boards
in MPQ General Discussion

There seems to be some confusion among some players around who does what and what might happen. So I wanted to clearly lay out the recent relevant pieces.

First: 505 Games has been a standalone publishing subsidiary of the Digital Brothers since 2006.

D3 (publisher) and Demiurge (developers/coders) released MPQ in October 2013, as many know. This division of D3 became D3go in 2015.

In Jan 2021, 505 Games acquired Infinity Plus Two, developers of the original Puzzle Quest games and owners of the IP. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/505-games-acquires-infinity-plus-two

On June 6, 2022, D3go announced that Broken Circle Studios would take over as the developer for MPQ in a "collaborative handoff" from Demiurge.

On June 27, 2022, 505 Games parent Digital Bros announced that they had acquired D3go. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/505-games-parent-company-acquires-d3-go

Now, as we know, as of 1/1/26, Infinity Plus Two is the developer (coder) for Marvel Puzzle Quest, bringing not only the ownership but development and all management of Puzzle Quest games (MPQ being the outlier until now) under one corporate umbrella.

Anyway I hope this is helpful for people to set expectations and understand the situation we are now in terms of what might happen, and how the game might be run.

Comments

  • Chrynos1989
    Chrynos1989 Posts: 636 Critical Contributor

    @entrailbucket said:
    It would help if anyone who knows could lay out what a publisher does and what a developer does.

    I've never been 100% clear on how it works, in MPQ or elsewhere, and the lines have always seemed blurry to me. Like I know iceIX has always worked for the publisher, but seems to be very involved in design at various points.

    I always believed it to be that developers code the games and publishers do the marketing and releasing on plattforms, like singers and record labels, but I might be wrong here

  • TheXMan
    TheXMan Posts: 284 Mover and Shaker


    Just for fun, I went to Broken Circle Studios website...

  • Chrynos1989
    Chrynos1989 Posts: 636 Critical Contributor

    @TheXMan said:

    Just for fun, I went to Broken Circle Studios website...

    They can’t properly update the game, you think they can properly update their website?

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 8,065 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Chrynos1989 said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    It would help if anyone who knows could lay out what a publisher does and what a developer does.

    I've never been 100% clear on how it works, in MPQ or elsewhere, and the lines have always seemed blurry to me. Like I know iceIX has always worked for the publisher, but seems to be very involved in design at various points.

    I always believed it to be that developers code the games and publishers do the marketing and releasing on plattforms, like singers and record labels, but I might be wrong here

    It doesn't seem to work this way for MPQ. It's really hard to tell, and they've never been specific about it, but employees of the publisher (like iceIX, who's been around since 2013) seem to have a lot of input on design. The publisher runs this forum, and employs the various community managers, but developers seemed to sometimes post here too.

  • Krazy
    Krazy Posts: 103 Tile Toppler
    edited 6 January 2026, 04:28

    anyone who knows could lay out what a publisher does and what a developer does

    Typically it works like this:

    Game Publisher: The Business & Distribution Side

    • Financing development (often paying the developer)
    • Distribution (digital storefronts, retail, platform negotiations)
    • Marketing and PR (trailers, ads, press outreach)
    • Localization (Translating the game's text into multiple languages)
    • Customer support and community management i.e. S0Kun
    • Setting release timelines and long term strategy

    Game Developer: The Creators

    • Designing gameplay, levels, and mechanics
    • Writing code and building game systems (Software Engineers/Developers)
    • Creating art, animations, sound, and music
    • Testing and refining the game, Quality Assurance (QA)
    • Maintaining and updating the game post‑launch, fixing bugs.

    Both groups play a pivotal roles in creating games.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 8,065 Chairperson of the Boards

    @WhiteBomber said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    It would help if anyone who knows could lay out what a publisher does and what a developer does.

    I've never been 100% clear on how it works, in MPQ or elsewhere, and the lines have always seemed blurry to me. Like I know iceIX has always worked for the publisher, but seems to be very involved in design at various points.

    Totally depends on the teams and their relationship. When I was at Neversoft, Activision was very heavy handed in what needed to be done and definitely by when. So much so, they completely killed our studio to merge it with IW, after trying to dictate creative direction (which is a tough thing to do when the studio has its own ideas and wants).

    Ive been under a Sony published studio now for quite some time, and they give signifcantly more freedom to their studios.

    In my experience, it just deoends on the publisher and their relationship with the studio. If the studio has a sizable team and is competent, it makes sense to give them that freedom. There is a contract with all of their rules llaid out, including who owns the IP etc.

    Typically, the publisher is the money (and usually with it, deadlines) plus any assistance the studio might need (usually non creative roles). It sounds to me like 505 is more involved (which makes sense given the scope of Marvel and small team that could maintain PQ).

    It's still strange to me seeing the publisher running community management and outreach, but, again makes sense given the evolution of this project.

    Right, so what we actually need (and what we don't have, and what we've never had) is a more clear description of their relationship and who's responsible for what. Without that it's impossible for us to assign blame for these problems to one party or another -- who specifically designed the 6* rollout? Who prioritizes the bug list? Who approved the Unity rebuild and set the schedule for it?

    That's what I've been getting at since the changeover was announced. If bugs aren't getting fixed because the publisher sets the priority and task list, then changing development studios won't do anything for that particular problem.

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