Rokky teams up with Revolution Software to bring Broken Sword franchise to China

Rokky has signed a co-publishing deal with Revolution Software to bring the Broken Sword franchise to China, marking Rokky’s first step into publishing after years as a PC game distributor. The China team that handled distribution for publishers like Sony, Capcom, and Team17 is being turned into an official publishing unit, so this is more than a one-off regional release.

For developers, the practical takeaway is that Rokky is taking on the full local-market layer: marketing, translation, localisation, influencer outreach, and community management. That matters in China, where success often depends on more than just a store page and a build upload. The partnership also shows how distribution relationships can evolve into publishing operations once a company has enough regional reach and local market knowledge.

The first titles in scope are Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged and the upcoming remaster of The Smoking Mirror, both planned for simplified and traditional Chinese. Revolution says the remasters include redrawn backgrounds, more than 30,000 reanimated character sprites, and enhanced audio, so the localisation work is landing on top of a fairly substantial content refresh.

Revolution’s Charles Cecil said the studio had long seen demand from Chinese fans and had already involved players from China and elsewhere in feedback during the reforging process. Rokky CEO Vadim Andreev framed the move as a new challenge: the company has distributed plenty of games, but publishing brings a different skill set and a different set of responsibilities.