Following the success of Dead Cells, Motion Twin desired to move on to new projects, while other team members wanted to keep supporting it. An agreement was made on licensing, and Evil Empire was spun out of Motion Twin and founded by former employees in 2019.[4] While Motion Twin was started as a worker cooperative, Evil Empire has a more traditional corporate structure.[5][6] After the release of the "The End is Near" update for Dead Cells, Evil Empire announced they would be moving on to other projects.[7]