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Curated playlist

British subsidiaries of foreign companies

  • Gamer NetworkTwo brothers in London launched Eurogamer on the 4th of September 1999. It became Gamer Network.
  • HarperCollinsHarperCollins joined a New York printer and a Glasgow printer that never met. Murdoch merged them in 1989.
  • Anime LimitedIn 2020, Anime Limited became the first company outside Japan to release Evangelion on Blu-ray.
  • StudioCanal UKStudioCanal UK began as a British company that opened with an old black-and-white thriller.
  • ParlophoneParlophone carries a logo that looks like a British pound sign, yet the mark is really a stylised blackletter L. The letter stands for Lindström, the name of the company that created the label. The resemblance to the pound sign, and to the…
  • Polydor RecordsPolydor Records began in a German music box factory. The Leipzig firm was founded in 1887.
  • Rockstar NorthRockstar North, the Edinburgh studio behind Grand Theft Auto V, began its life in Dundee under another name. By March 2024, that game had sold 200 million copies, making it the second-best-selling video game ever. It is also described as…
  • CadburyCadbury began as a tea shop, not a chocolate company. John Cadbury opened his Birmingham stall in 1824.
  • Orion Publishing GroupOrion Publishing Group won 2021 British Book Awards Publisher of the Year after a 2020 sales jump.
  • Media MoleculeMedia Molecule wanted to stay under thirty employees. By 2023, the studio had grown to 135 people.
  • Virgin MediaVirgin Media began as a cable company that bought a mobile firm. It formed in 2007 after NTL and Telewest merged.
  • Climax StudiosClimax Studios began life as a company called Images Software Ltd., founded by Karl Jeffery on the 3rd of February 1988. Its early work was practical rather than glamorous. The company built and ported games across the home computers,…
  • Google DeepMindGoogle DeepMind began with an AI learning to play Breakout. It later shared a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
  • Eidos InteractiveTwo 24-year-old ad men quit their jobs to start the company that became Eidos. They named it Domark.
  • Rare (company)Rare Limited is a British video game developer based in Twycross, Leicestershire, and today a studio inside Xbox Game Studios. In 1985, its founders, Tim and Chris Stamper, looked at the computer their first company depended on and called…

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