Last April developer Ascaron Entertainment, best known for their Sacred action-RPG series, declared bankruptcy but said that operations would continue while they found a buyer. Now it appears at least part of the company has been bought out by Kalypso Media which will result in the formation of a new game developer.

In a new (German language) press release today Kalypso Media revealed that 15 former Asceron Entertainment team members have formed a new team called Gaming Minds Studios. The team is owned by Kalypso who has also purchased a number of game properties from Ascaron, including the Port Royale, Darkstar One and The Patrician series of games. Specific financial terms were not disclosed. Gaming Minds Studios is currently working on the third game in The Patrician series which will be released sometime this summer.

Not mentioned in the press release is the fate of Ascaron's Sacred series. In its bankruptcy statement, Ascaron stated that 500,000 copies of the PC version of Sacred 2 had been sold by the end of 2008. The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions shipped to stores in May and Ascaron stated at the time that a Sacred 2 expansion pack as well as Sacred 2 were already in the works.