from Crytek. In September, THQ Nordic acquired the intellectual property to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, including the cancelled Project Copernicus, from 38 Studios, as well as Act of War and the Alone in the Dark franchise from Atari. In November 2018, THQ Nordic acquired a 90% stake in Finnish developer Bugbear Entertainment, including all of its intellectual property, for an undisclosed sum, leaving open the option to purchase the remaining 10% at a later point in time. That same month, THQ Nordic acquired the Expeditions franchise, including Expeditions: Conquistador and Expeditions: Viking, and announced that it was working with series creator Logic Artists to develop a third game in the series. In December 2018, THQ Nordic acquired the Carmageddon franchise from Stainless Games, which itself had bought the franchise in 2011. In January 2019, THQ Nordic acquired the rights to the Outcast franchise from Belgian developer Appeal. In May 2019, the publisher acquired Piranha Bytes. In August 2019, THQ Nordic acquired American developer Gunfire Games, which had worked with THQ Nordic on the release of Darksiders III. Nine Rocks Games, an in-house studio based in Bratislava, Slovakia, and led by David Durcak of DayZ, was established by THQ Nordic in February 2020 to work on "shooter/survival" games. In May 2020, THQ Nordic and Koch Media, another Embracer Group arm, exchanged several intellectual property rights: THQ Nordic received Risen, Rush for Berlin, Sacred, Second Sight, and Singles: Flirt Up Your Life, while handing off Red Faction and Painkiller to Koch Media's Deep Silver label. After previously seeking player opinion on a possible Gothic remake as early as 2019, THQ Nordic announced in March 2021 that it had established Alkimia Interactive in Barcelona to lead development on this project. THQ announced the acquisition of Kaiko, Appeal Studios, and Massive Miniteam (Pulheim-based porting studio) in May 2021, along with the creation of distributor THQ Nordic France SAS and animation technical division Gate 21 d.o.o. On February 24, 2022, THQNordic announced the acquisition of Frankfurt-based Metricminds, a motion capture and animation studio that has worked on THQNordic games like Destroy All Humans! Remake, Darksiders III and Remnant: From The Ashes. Controversy On 26 February 2019, THQ Nordic's public relations and marketing director, Philipp Brock, and business and product development director Reinhard Pollice, hosted an "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) questions-and-answers session on 8chan, a controversial imageboard website commonly associated with child pornography, racism and hate