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Curated playlist

Microsoft subsidiaries

  • Id Softwareid Software, a game developer based in Richardson, Texas, traces its origins to a copy of someone else's game. In September 1990, programmer John Carmack found an efficient way to scroll graphics sideways on a PC. That night he and…
  • LinkedInIn one day in February 2016, LinkedIn lost $10 billion in market value. Four months later, Microsoft agreed to buy it.
  • Arkane StudiosArkane Studios began on the 1st of October 1999 in Lyon, France, backed by an investment of 1,150,000 French francs. Eleven founders signed on, and only six of them were developers. This French game developer would go on to create the…
  • Mojang StudiosMojang Studios is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm, and it makes Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. As of 2021 the studio employed about 600 people, with further offices in London, Shanghai, Tokyo and…
  • Activision BlizzardActivision Blizzard began in 1979 as a third-party developer making games for the Atari Video Computer System. That small beginning grew into a holding company based in Santa Monica, California, which by 2018 was the largest game company…
  • Bethesda SoftworksBethesda Softworks started on the 28th of June 1986, at the kitchen table of a house in Bethesda, Maryland. Its founder, Christopher Weaver, treated the new company as an experiment. He wanted to learn whether the PC market was a viable…
  • Obsidian EntertainmentObsidian Entertainment, the video game developer now based in Irvine, California, once kept Three Clown Software on its shortlist of possible names. Scorched Earth was on the list too. The founders chose Obsidian instead. They found it…
  • Double FineIn February 2012, the San Francisco studio Double Fine Productions asked strangers on Kickstarter to pay for a new adventure game. The full funding goal arrived in under nine hours of a month-long drive. Within a day the project had passed…
  • 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…
  • Ninja TheoryNinja Theory is a British video game developer based in Cambridge, England, and today it works as a first-party studio for Xbox Game Studios. It began in March 2000 under a different name, Just Add Monsters. Tameem Antoniades, Nina…

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