Double Helix Games

• 1. Introduction

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  Double Helix Games arrived on the map not through a founding story but through a collision of two older ones. On the 9th of October 2007, Foundation 9 Entertainment announced that two of its studios, The Collective and Shiny Entertainment, had packed up and relocated together into new offices spanning sixty thousand square feet in Irvine, California. The merger was underway. Workers at both studios were told there would be no job losses.

  The name "Double Helix Games" did not come until March 2008, several months after the physical relocation. Michael Persson led the combined studio from the start. What followed was a run of licensed and genre titles across nearly every major platform of the era, ending with an acquisition that pulled the studio into one of the largest retail companies in the world.

• 2. Two Studios, One Address

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  Shiny Entertainment had come into Foundation 9's orbit in October 2006, under terms that required it to physically co-locate with The Collective, which Foundation 9 already owned. The two studios spent roughly a year preparing before the joint announcement in October 2007 confirmed they had moved into the shared Irvine space.

  The merger was positioned as clean and orderly. Foundation 9 described the consolidation as one that would not cost anyone their job. Under Michael Persson's leadership, the combined workforce began operating as a single entity, eventually adopting the Double Helix name in early 2008. The Irvine address would remain the studio's home for its entire independent life.

• 3. A Catalog of Licenses

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  Silent Hill: Homecoming, released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, was Double Helix's first shipped title under its new identity. Konami Digital Entertainment published it, placing the studio immediately in the business of handling an established horror franchise.

  The years that followed brought a string of licensed properties. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra arrived in 2009, published by Electronic Arts across five platforms including the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable. Square Enix published Front Mission Evolved in 2010 on three platforms. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment published Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters in 2011. Activision followed with Battleship in 2012. Each title carried a recognizable property from film, television, or an existing game series.

  A canceled project, Harker, had been announced for 2008 but never reached release, leaving a gap in the studio's public record for that year.

• 4. Killer Instinct and the Xbox One

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  Killer Instinct, published by Microsoft Studios for Xbox One in 2013, represented a different kind of project for Double Helix. Rather than adapting a film or an outside intellectual property, the studio was reviving a dormant fighting game franchise for a new console launch.

  When Amazon's acquisition became public on the 5th of February 2014, Microsoft Studios moved quickly to clarify the situation for players. The publisher stated it would continue development on Killer Instinct with a new development partner. Double Helix's role in the game's first season was finished, but the franchise itself was not.

• 5. Amazon and the Final Chapter

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  Amazon's announcement on the 5th of February 2014 described Double Helix as an acquisition by the retailing company. The studio did not survive as a separate brand. It was folded into Amazon Game Studios, the retailer's game development division, at the same Irvine location where Double Helix had been operating.

  Amazon Game Studios had been established in 2012, two years before the acquisition. Double Helix's last shipped titles before the takeover were Strider, released across five platforms including PlayStation 4 and Xbox One with Capcom as publisher, and UFOs Love Cows, an Android title published by Amazon Game Studios itself. The Strider release, attributed to 2014, placed Double Helix's own work overlapping with the moment of its absorption into Amazon.