Beloved British shooter series TimeSplitters has been bought by Koch Media, and it sounds like something is in the works.

TimeSplitters was created by the Nottingham-based Free Radical Design back in 2000 by many of the team behind the legendary Goldeneye. It spawned two sequels - the best of which was TimeSplitters 2 - but the franchise has now lain dormant for more than a decade.

As Free Radical Design became Crytek UK, and then Deep Silver Dambuster Studios, Crytek has held onto the TimeSplitters license. There were initial efforts to investigate a revival of the brand, but nothing transpired.

Today's news means Koch Media - which also owns Deep Silver Dambuster - has the rights to make new TimeSplitters games and re-release old ones.

It certainly sounds like something is in the works, too.

"We are hugely excited to have acquired Timesplitters," Koch Media boss Klemens Kundratitz said in a statement. "The original games gave fans a massive content offer and provided a pure and genuinely fun arcade shooter experience.

"We have many fans of the Timesplitters series among our own staff who are passionate about creating a product that will thrill todays gaming audience."

The rights to fellow Free Radical Design game Second Sight, an underappreciated story-led shooter about a gun-toting parapsychology researcher discovering special powers, has also been picked up by Koch. "Forthcoming Second Site [sic] products will also be published by Deep Silver," the statement reads.

Initial plans for a TimeSplitters 4 at Free Radical Design were scuppered when the studio fell into administration following LucasArts' cancelling of the Free Radical Design-built Star Wars Battlefront, despite much of that game being built. It's unknown what a new TimeSplitters game might look like now, or who from that original team nearly two decades ago may still be attached to the team.

Since then, fans of the franchise have been attempting to crowdsource a fan-made recreation of the game, TimeSplitters Rewind, with Crytek's acknoledgement. But after years and years of work, little has yet to materialise there.

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TimeSplitters actually guest-starred in a previous Koch Media-published game - Homefront: The Revolution - via an arcade cabinet which hosted some of its levels.