Rune 2's publisher has regained the game's code after its developers suddenly shut down

Rune 2, sequel to the much older RPG Rune, has been sailing through uncertain waters since its release two months ago. The publisher Ragnarok Game may have finally reached the eye of the storm as of last week when they regained control of the viking RPG's code from the former developers whose studio suddenly shut down and quickly after accepted positions at a new Bethesda studio. Now Ragnarok can get back to work.

The day after Rune 2's November 12th, 2019 launch, the developers at Human Head Studios announced they were shutting down. The development team had accepted positions at the new Roundhouse Studios owned by Bethesda. According to Ragnarok, who Human Head had an agreement with dating back to 2017, the developers then refused to hand over Rune 2's code. Last month, Ragnarok Game filed a legal complaint in California naming the (now closed) Human Head and three individual members of the former studio as parties to the suit.

On December 30th, Ragnarok announced they have now received a hard drive with Rune 2's source code and assets. At present, they have "brought on engineers to check the thoroughness of materials and ensure the hard drive has all Rune II files."

The next order of business, Ragnarok say, is working on a patch to address all of the bugs reported since Rune 2's launch. With Human Head closed and Ragnarok without their hands on the source code, presumably no one has been able to address any issues found. That hasn't stopped players from diligently reporting bugs over the last two months on Rune 2's forums. Ragnarok seem to have a healthy task list ahead ranging from characters being reset to level 1 to less troubling issues like snow appearing where it shouldn't.

With any luck, this post means good news for all involved. Ideally the former Human Head developers are enjoying new jobs at Roundhouse, Ragnarok are able to get to work supporting Rune 2, and players won't have to wait too much longer for a patch to fix the bugs they've encountered since launch.

If this is the first you're hearing of Rune 2, you can find it on the Epic Store where it's 25% off until tomorrow, January 7th.