Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited. In 1999, it became a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media. In its first 15 years, it was a video game developer and self-published its titles. In 2001, Bethesda spun off its in-house development team into Bethesda Game Studios, leaving Bethesda Softworks to focus on publishing operations.
Jagex Limited is a British video game developer and publisher based at the Cambridge Science Park in Cambridge, England. It is best known for RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, both free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The company's name is derived from the company's original slogan, "Java Gaming Experts".
Blizzard North was an American video game development studio based in San Mateo, California. The studio was the Bay Area division of Blizzard Entertainment, known for its Diablo series. The company was originally based in Redwood City, California, before moving a short distance away to San Mateo, with Blizzard proper being based in Irvine, southern California.
Free Radical Design Ltd. was a British video game developer based in Nottingham. Founded by David Doak, Steve Ellis, Karl Hilton and Graeme Norgate in Stoke-on-Trent in April 1999, they are best known for their TimeSplitters series of games. After going into financial administration, it was announced on 3 February 2009 that the studio had been acquired by German video game developer Crytek and would be renamed Crytek UK. Crytek had a good relationship with the city of Nottingham due in part to its sponsorship of the Gamecity festival and its recruitment drives with Nottingham Trent University. In 2014, the studio closed and a majority of the staff transferred to the newly formed Dambuster Studios. In May 2021, the original founders reformed the studio, led by Doak and Ellis, to create a new entry in the TimeSplitters series. The reformed studio incarnation operated under Deep Silver. The second iteration was shutdown on 11 December 2023.
Gameloft SE is a French video game publisher based in Paris, founded in December 1999 by Ubisoft co-founder Michel Guillemot. The company operates 18 development studios worldwide, and publishes games with a special focus on the mobile games market. Formerly a public company traded at the Paris Bourse, Gameloft was acquired by media conglomerate Vivendi in 2016.
n-Space Inc. was an American video game developer founded in 1994 by Erick S. Dyke, Dan O'Leary, and Sean Purcell. It developed games on nearly a dozen different platforms, but was mostly focused on Nintendo consoles and handhelds in particular since 2001. The game Geist was a second-party project, developed in cooperation with Nintendo. In March 2016, it was announced that n-Space had closed down for unknown reasons.
Psygnosis Limited was a British video game developer and publisher headquartered at Wavertree Technology Park in Liverpool. Founded in 1984 by Ian Hetherington, Jonathan Ellis, and David Lawson, the company initially became known for well-received games on the Atari ST and Amiga. In 1993, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) and began developing games for the original PlayStation. It later became a part of SCE Worldwide Studios. The company was the oldest and second largest development house within SCE's European stable of developers, and became best known for franchises such as Lemmings, Wipeout, Formula One, and Colony Wars.
Pseudo Interactive was a video game developer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and started in 1995 by David Wu, Rich Hilmer, and Daniel Posner. In 2006, the company had over fifty employees. After closing, several employees formed DrinkBox Studios. Pseudo Interactive was later revived in 2021.
WildWorks, Inc. is an American game development studio based in Salt Lake City, Utah. The studio was assembled from game industry veterans, co-founded by Kris Johnson, Clark Stacey, and Jeff Amis. The studio has developed titles for all ages across many platforms, including home consoles, PCs and handheld devices.
Jeff Strain is an American entrepreneur, CEO, and founder of three independent video game studios, most recently Possibility Space.
Star Wars: Battlefront is a series of first- and third-person shooter video games based on the Star Wars franchise. Players take the role of characters from the franchise in either of two opposing factions in different time periods of the Star Wars universe. The series was launched in 2004 by LucasArts with Star Wars: Battlefront, developed by Pandemic Studios for LucasArts. The game received positive reviews and sold well. In 2005 Pandemic developed a sequel, Star Wars: Battlefront II, which was also critically and commercially successful.
Undead Labs LLC is an American video game developer based in Seattle, Washington. The company was founded in November 2009 by Jeff Strain and developed the State of Decay series. In 2018, Undead Labs became part of Microsoft Studios.
Aces Game Studio (ACES) was an American video game developer based in Redmond, Washington, owned by Microsoft Game Studios. It was founded in 1988 under the name Bruce Artwick Organization Limited at Champaign, Illinois, by Bruce Artwick, creator of Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft Space Simulator and also co-founder of Sublogic.
PlayStation Studios is an American division of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) that oversees the video game development at the studios owned by SIE. The division was established as SCE Worldwide Studios in September 2005 and rebranded as PlayStation Studios in 2020.
Stadia was a cloud gaming service developed and operated by Google. Known in development as Project Stream, the service debuted through a closed beta in October 2018, and publicly launched in November 2019. Stadia was accessible through Chromecast Ultra and Android TV devices, on personal computers via the Google Chrome web browser and other Chromium-based browsers, Chromebooks and tablets running ChromeOS, and the Stadia mobile app on supported Android devices. There was also an experimental mode with support for all Android devices that were capable of installing the Stadia mobile app. In December 2020, Google released an iOS browser-based progressive web application for Stadia, enabling gameplay in the Safari browser.
Kerbal Space Program 2 is a space flight simulation video game developed by Intercept Games and published by Private Division. It is the sequel to 2015's Kerbal Space Program and was released on early access on February 24, 2023, for Windows.
MultiVersus is an upcoming free-to-play crossover fighting game developed by Player First Games and published by Warner Bros. Games for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The game features characters from Warner Bros. Entertainment franchises.
The Day Before was a multiplayer survival horror extraction shooter video game developed by Fntastic and published by Mytona. Set in the future, players controlled a character who must traverse and survive in the fictional, post-apocalyptic 'New Fortune City', which has been overrun by zombies. It was announced in 2021 and released in early access on 7 December 2023 for Microsoft Windows on Steam.
Beginning in 2023 and continuing into 2024, the video game industry has experienced mass layoffs. Over 10,000 jobs were lost in 2023, and an additional over 9,500 jobs were lost in 2024 from January to May. These layoffs had reverberating effects on both established game development studios and emerging companies, impacting employees, projects, and the overall landscape of the gaming industry. The layoffs caused several video games to be canceled, video game studios to be shut down or divested from their parent company, and thousands of employees to lose their jobs.
