Who owns the ip of Shadow Hearts? What happened to the original team?

The IP holders are Universal Entertainment https://www.universal-777.com/en/

They confirmed that they hold the rights, Aruze was renamed to Universal Entertainment back in 2009 same time when the developer Sacnoth/Nautilus was absored/dissolved into them.

Aruze Gaming was a subsidiary of Universal Entertainment which was sold again back in 2009 so Aruze Gaming does not own the rights, don't let the name confuse you. For more info regarding Aruze Gaming please check out: this

Universal Entertainment currently have no plans to do anything with the Shadow Hearts series.

The last time they did anything with the ip was back in 2015/16 when they revised their slot machine of Shadow Hearts Covenant.

Koudelka was developed by Sacnoth (Later renamed to Nautilus after SH1) it was published by SNK but when they went into went into money problems they were bought out by Aruze but then later SNK Playmore bought back most of its ip back except for Koudelka. For more info regarding SNK and Koudelka please check out: this

Liked mentioned the developer Nautilus was dissolved back into 2009 and the employees of the dev team basically mostly went to feelplus (who made Lost Odyssey) and Marvelous (Marvelous owns Xseed who published Shadow Hearts From The New World in America).

There were also a few who went to Mistwalker (Who was also involved in Lost Odyssey) and then there is Matsuzo Machida who opened his own studio Wildrose.

There is a big question on how is Machida's relationship with Universal Entertainment.

Because if it was just up to Machida he would make a prequel or at the very least a spiritual successor of which he would probably change enough where he would not need Universal's permission.

Even if Universal Entertainment would be willing to do some kind of a deal with Wild Rose, Universal will certainly not fund it. So the challenge for Machida would be to find an investor.

This is not a situation like Alan Wake etc... where the rights will return to the developer since the original team was dissolved into Universal Entertainment so they are in full control of what happens with the Shadow Hearts series.

Honestly I did not plan to make this post today, but with getting asked these questions I felt the need to do this especially for the petition and for the fans who are interested.

I may make more posts in the future (About the challenge for fans and what did not work) or at the very least edit this to add more info, I hope that you all enjoyed this! Thanks for reading!