Piranha’s Mike Hoge said in an interview, ”We get the rights to Gothic back when we have finished Risen 2. Why? Because we did only sell them to our ex-publisher for a certain amount of time.”
Michael Rüve from Piranha was more evasive, “Personally, I think that there is no reason to comment on our contractual relationship with JoWood. Everybody knows that we are currently not working on Gothic. JoWood has other preoccupations at the moment. Speculations on our future plans after Risen 2 are just that - speculations.”
The Gothic series has suffered under JoWood’s stewardship, to the point at which the publisher apologized for Gothic 3. It hasn’t helped that JoWood recently declared insolvency and put Gothic 4 expansion Fall of Setarrif in indefinite hiatus.