Steins;Gate Developer Mages Acquires Independence from Kadokawa Group

Today Mages announced with a press release a management buyout by Chiyomaru Shikura’s Chiyomaru Studio.

Shikura-san’s studio purchased all of Mages’ shares from its parent company Dwango, which is, in turn, a fully-owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Group.

This effectively grants the studio’s independence. On top of that, the company’s gaming and music businesses including the 5pb. brand will be consolidated under the Mages brand.

This aims to provide Mages with the ability to make quicker and more flexible business decisions centered on President Chiyomaru Shikura himself. According to the announcement, the newly-independent company will strive to create new value and business opportunities.

While the studio is now independent of Dwango and Kadokawa, the announced intention is to continue holding a good relationship with the former parent company.

If you’re unfamiliar with Mages and 5pb. they’re behind popular visual novel franchises like Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes, Chaos;Child, and more. They mostly worked on visual novels and similar products.

They also often work on games inspired by anime and manga IP, like the upcoming DanMachi Infinite Combate.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see what kind of games the studio will work on now that it’s independent, but we’ll have to wait and see for now.

About the author

Giuseppe Nelva

Proud weeb hailing from sunny (not as much as people think) Italy and long-standing gamer since the age of Mattel Intellivision and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Definitely a multi-platform gamer, he still holds the old dear PC nearest to his heart, while not disregarding any console on the market. RPGs (of any nationality), MMORPGs, and visual novels are his daily bread, but he enjoys almost every other genre, prominently racing simulators, action and sandbox games. He is also one of the few surviving fans on Earth of the flight simulator genre.

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