Take-Two Interactive announced the acquisition of Central European game development studio Illusion Softworks, best known for titles such as Mafia, Hidden & Dangerous. Currently working on Mafia II, all 200 Illusion Softworks employees will join Take-Two’s 2K Games publishing label and henceforth be known as 2K Czech.

D3 Publisher has signed an worldwide exclusive license agreement to publish and distribute Illusion Softworks', known for Mafia and Hidden and Dangerous, yet-to-be-announced next-gen title based on new IP currently under development.

It has been a bit quiet around Vietcong developer Pterodon, and after several months, the reason has been revealed. As it turns out, Pterodon has been acquired by fellow Czech Republic developer Illusion Softworks nine months ago. Technically, Pterodon still exists but is merely a shell company. All employees were moved to Illusion and are working on Enemy In Sight, recently sold off by ailing Atari to a yet-unknown publisher.

Illusion Softworks, known for the Hidden & Dangerous, Mafia and Vietcong series, today signed an agreement with Meqon Research, for the provision of game dynamics and physics for Illusion's forthcoming 3rd person action game scheduled for release in 2007.

Tiscali Games got a chance to chat with Petr Vochozka, CEO of Czech-based developer company Illusion Softworks about their recently released action game Mafia for PC. First part of interview includes questions and answers about fulfilling of their expectations, amount of sold copies during first months, problems with release in Italy, average rating in reviews, patch plans and possibility of multiplayer addon or AI improvements.