The Roccat brand has officially met its demise, as Turtle Beach has confirmed that it will no longer be using it in its peripheral lineup. We first got an inkling about this last week, when Turtle Beach revealed a plethora of new PC gaming peripherals under its own brand, but many of the product names mirrored those of the popular Roccat brand, which was previously purchased by Turtle Beach in 2019.
As the maker of the Syn Max Air, our pick as one of the best gaming headsets for its wonderful RGB design, Roccat was a hugely recognizable brand with its fierce logo. We alluded to Roccat’s unfortunate demise when we covered the new Turtle Beach PC peripherals last week, and the reaction has been mixed.
While the move seems to make a lot of sense, and Turtle Beach has provided a full Roccat FAQ on its website, our questions focus more on why the change was made so suddenly, and why big promises were made about Roccat’s independence post-acquisition.
Back in 2020, one year after the purchase, Turtle Beach addressed the future of Roccat on PCGamesN, stating; “Roccat will stay a PC peripheral brand.” In a very detailed and enthusiastic discussion with PCGamesN, Roccat founder Réne Korte would go on to evangelize about its existing product lineup and propose that 2021 would be a huge year for the German brand.
Korte left Roccat in April 2023, and it may well be that once they parted ways with the business, this merger of sorts became the new plan. Despite the efforts of Turtle Beach to maintain a legacy through the use of product names, to me, the palm tree branding doesn’t quite have the same visual impact as Roccat’s eye-catching logo design.
In an ultra-competitive market, Roccat had branding and a name with which many gamers were familiar, even if they were yet to take the plunge and try one of its products. The Vulkan, Kone, Burst, and Sense product names are the only ones currently confirmed to be moving over to Turtle Beach, and the legacy of Roccat’s design appears well and truly alive based on the product snapshots we’ve seen so far, if you ignore the logo, of course.
The Roccat news only started to land with gamers over the weekend, largely due to there being very little publicizing of the integration, and many are split on how they feel about the plan. However, it’s truly heartwarming to read the many posts over on r/Roccat, where gamers are sharing how they first ended up with Roccat gear, and how it played a role in their favorite pastime.
While we wave goodbye to Roccat, if you want to check out some of the company’s once-leading products. then give our Kone XP Air review or Syn Pro Air review a read to learn more about its history.