CI Games

Last updated

CI Games S.A.
Formerly
  • City Interactive Sp. z o.o.
  • (2002–2007)
  • City Interactive S.A.
  • (2007–2013)
Company type Public
WSE:  CIGAMES
Industry Video games
Predecessors
  • Lemon Interactive
  • We Open Eyes
  • Tatanka
Founded2002;22 years ago (2002)
Headquarters
Warsaw
,
Poland
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Marek Tymiński (CEO)
Products
Number of employees
153 [1]  (2024)
Subsidiaries Hexworks [2]
Website cigames.com

CI Games S.A. (formerly City Interactive S.A.) is a Polish video game developer and publisher based in Warsaw. Founded in 2002, originally as a budget-range game company, CI Games is best known for the Sniper: Ghost Warrior and Lords of the Fallen series.

Contents

History

City Interactive was founded in 2002 through the merger of three video game companies: Lemon Interactive, We Open Eyes and Tatanka. [3] The company originally acted as a developer and publisher of budget-range games. [4] In 2007, City Interactive merged with Oni Games, a third-party publisher formed alongside City Interactive in 2002, and Detalion Art, an adventure game developer founded by Roland Pantoła, Maciej Miąsik, Danuta Sienkowska, Robert Ożóg, Łukasz Pisarek and Krzysztof Bar, when they left LK Avalon. [3] Also in 2007, City Interactive undertook its initial public offering and became a public company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. [5]

In 2008, City Interactive dropped their budget-range operations, which they wished to underline with the subsequent release of Sniper: Ghost Warrior in 2010. [4] In an interview with magazine MCV , the company stated that the success of the game led them to believe that they had made the right decisions in terms of strategy and product portfolio. [4] By June 2011, City Interactive employed a total of 150 people in its headquarters in Warsaw, its development studios in Rzeszów, Katowice, Poznań and Guildford, and its publishing offices in Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. [5] In 2012, City Interactive's development team adopted the name "CI Games", [3] and City Interactive changed its name entirely to CI Games in 2013. [6]

In February 2018, CI Games shrunk their development staff to 30 people. [7] According to chief executive officer Marek Tymiński, the measure had been taken due to many problems having occurred during the production of Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 , even though the game itself had surpassed one million copies sold and had turned a profit for the company in the company's 2017 fiscal year by the time the decision was made. [8] In January 2019, CI Games established a new publishing label, United Label, for independent games. United Label is to help fund indie developers in exchange for a share of the games' revenue. [9]

From 2020 through to 2021, the number of CI Games employees increased significantly, with the current team now over 140 people and growing. Around eighty members of staff are directly involved in game production, with forty of those working on Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 , fifty on Lords of the Fallen , and the remainder forming the QA department. [10]

In January 2024, CI Games laid off 10% of its workforce. Lords of the Fallen developer Hexworks and Sniper Ghost Warrior developer Underdog were also affected. [11] Another 30 employees were laid off in May 2024. [12]

Games

Games developed

Games published

Related Research Articles

<i>Myth</i> (video game series) Video game series

Myth is a series of real-time tactics video games for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. There are three main games in the series: Myth: The Fallen Lords (1997), Myth II: Soulblighter (1998), and Myth III: The Wolf Age (2001). The Fallen Lords was developed by Bungie, and published by Bungie in North America and Eidos Interactive in Europe. Soulblighter was also developed by Bungie, and was published by Bungie in North America and GT Interactive in Europe. The Wolf Age was developed by MumboJumbo, and co-published by Take-Two Interactive and Gathering of Developers for Windows and by Take-Two and MacSoft for Mac.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LithTech</span> Game engine

LithTech is a game engine developed by Monolith Productions and comparable with the Quake and Unreal engines. Monolith and a number of other video game developers have used LithTech as the basis for their first-person shooter games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neversoft</span> American video game developer

Neversoft Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Woodland Hills, California. The studio was founded by Joel Jewett, Mick West and Chris Ward in July 1994 and was acquired by Activision in October 1999. Initially, the studio worked with Playmates Toys, where they worked on the game Skeleton Warriors, which was based on a animated television series of the same name. Throughout 1996, the studio grew, and worked on projects with Crystal Dynamics and Sony Computer Entertainment, but due to internal conflicts, they were cancelled.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebellion Developments</span> Video game company

Rebellion Developments Limited is a British video game developer based in Oxford, England. Founded by Jason and Chris Kingsley in December 1992, the company is best known for its Sniper Elite series and multiple games in the Alien vs. Predator series. Sister company Rebellion Publishing has published comic books since 2000, when it purchased 2000 AD, the publisher of characters such as Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper.

Saber Interactive Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Founded by Andrey Iones, Matthew Karch, and Anton Krupkin in 2001, it is controlled by Karch's investment company Beacon Interactive, created in 2024. The company employs over 1,350 people.

<i>Mortyr</i> 1999 video game

Mortyr 2093-1944, also known as simply Mortyr, is a first-person shooter computer game published by Interplay and developed by Polish developer Mirage Media and released in 1999. One of the earlier Polish developed first-person shooters for Microsoft Windows, the game follows a son of a scientist transported back in time to World War II to avert the Axis victory and features levels set both in World War II and the future. The game received unfavorable reviews at its launch, with the game garnering some positive coverage from the Polish video game press and widely panned abroad.

<i>Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic</i> Video game series

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) is a media franchise of space opera role-playing video games created and developed by BioWare, which have seen releases on the original Xbox, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, IOS, Android and Nintendo Switch. The franchise takes place in the fictional universe of Star Wars by George Lucas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deck13</span> German video game developer and publisher

Deck13 Interactive GmbH is a German video game developer and publisher based in Frankfurt. The company was founded in July 2001 by the team behind Artex Software, a studio that primarily developed video games for RISC OS, such as Ankh: The Tales of Mystery. Originally bearing the name TriggerLab, the company was renamed to Deck13 after the release of its first game, Stealth Combat, in 2002. Deck13 is best known for developing the action role-playing games Lords of the Fallen and The Surge. Deck13 also operates a Hamburg-based subsidiary studio, Deck13 Hamburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chrome Engine</span> 3D game engine

Chrome Engine is a proprietary 3D game engine developed by Techland. The current version, Chrome Engine 6, supports Mac OS X, Linux, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boomzap Entertainment</span> Video game developer

Boomzap Entertainment is a casual games developer registered in Singapore with a virtual office environment. It was formed in 2005 and has released 50 games to date that are ported on various platforms. Boomzap has developed for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Nintendo DS, Wii, iOS, and Android. Its games are available on games portals such as Big Fish Games, Yahoo!, WildTangent, GameHouse, Google Play, Amazon, iTunes, Steam and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nordcurrent</span> Lithuanian video game developer and publisher

Nordcurrent is a Ukrainian-Lithuanian video game development and publishing company headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania. It has three development studios in Vilnius, Odesa, and Dnipro (Ukraine). Nordcurrent develops and publishes casual and freemium games for smartphones, tablets and PC/Mac.

<i>Lords of the Fallen</i> (2014 video game) 2014 video game

Lords of the Fallen is an action role-playing video game developed by Deck13 and CI Games. It was released in October 2014 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows. A mobile version of the game, which features one-to-one swipe combat controls, was released on 9 February 2017 for iOS and Android, as a paid game with in-app purchases. A reboot of the same name was released in October 2023.

<i>Sniper Ghost Warrior 3</i> 2017 video game

Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is a tactical shooter video game developed and published by CI Games for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and was released worldwide on 25 April 2017. It is the fourth entry in the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series and is the sequel to Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2, and is also the first game in the series to feature an open world environment. The game received average reviews upon release.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior is a series of tactical shooter stealth video games that are developed and published by City Interactive.

Krafton Inc. is a South Korean video game publisher and holding company based in Bundang District, Seongnam. It was created in November 2018 to serve as the parent company for Bluehole, founded by Chang Byung-gyu in Seoul in March 2007, and its subsidiaries. The company has published several notable video game titles including TERA, PUBG: Battlegrounds, New State Mobile,The Callisto Protocol and Moonbreaker. According to Forbes, Chang has a net worth of $2.9 billion and is one of the seven gaming billionaires in South Korea.

<i>Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts</i> 2019 tactical shooter game by CI Games

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts is a tactical shooter stealth video game developed and published by CI Games. It is the fifth entry of the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series and the sequel to Sniper Ghost Warrior 3. The game was released worldwide on 22 November 2019 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It received fairly positive reviews from critics, with some reviewers calling it an improvement over its predecessors. A sequel titled Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 was released in 2021.

<i>Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2</i> 2021 tactical shooter game by CI Games

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is a 2021 tactical shooter stealth video game developed and published by CI Games. It is the sixth entry in the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series and is the sequel to Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts. The game was released on 4 June 2021 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. A version for PlayStation 5 was released on 24 August 2021.

Poland is a major video game market and home to one of the largest video game industries in the world. In 2022, Poland became the world’s fourth largest exporter of video games, and Polish publicly-traded gaming companies were worth over €12 billion. The game studios in the country employ around 10,000 people and release almost 500 new games annually.

<i>Lords of the Fallen</i> (2023 video game) 2023 video game

Lords of the Fallen is an action role-playing video game developed by Hexworks and published by CI Games. A successor to the 2014 video game of the same name, the game was released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on 13 October 2023. Upon release, it received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics and sold over one million units in the first ten days since release.

References

  1. ↑ "Management Report for H1 2024" (PDF). CI Games. 27 September 2024. Retrieved 27 September 2024.
  2. ↑ Wilson, Jason (8 September 2020). "CI Games announces Hexworks studio, which is finishing Lords of the Fallen 2". VentureBeat . Retrieved 28 August 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 Wolf, Mark J. P. (2015). Video Games Around the World. MIT Press. pp. 411, 417, 421. ISBN   9780262527163.
  4. 1 2 3 Dring, Christopher (8 July 2011). "INTERVIEW: Marek Tyminski/Jon Goddard, City Interactive". MCV .
  5. 1 2 IGN Staff (28 June 2011). "City Interactive Ships 'Sniper: Ghost Warrior' For PlayStation 3". IGN .
  6. ↑ Hall, Charlie (12 November 2014). "Following success of Lords of the Fallen, CI Games has two more AAA titles on the way". Polygon .
  7. ↑ Taylor, Haydn (19 February 2018). "Significant downsizing at CI Games despite profitable 2017". GamesIndustry.biz .
  8. ↑ Kerr, Chris (19 February 2018). "Polish studio CI Games 'significantly downsizes' dev team". Gamasutra .
  9. ↑ Kidwell, Emma (21 January 2019). "CI Games establishes United Label, a new publishing label dedicated to indies". Gamasutra . Retrieved 21 January 2019.
  10. ↑ Kucharczyk, Katarzyn (25 May 2021). "CI Games zwiększyło zyski. Akcje drożeją" [CI Games increased profits. The company's shares are going up.]. Parkiet (in Polish). Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 25 May 2021.
  11. ↑ Batchelor, James (18 January 2024). "CI Games lays off 10% of staff". GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved 4 March 2024.
  12. ↑ Batchelor, James (10 May 2024). "Around 30 people laid off in CI Games' final round of job cuts". GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved 11 May 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.