36 Facts About Starbreeze Studios

Starbreeze Studios AB is a Swedish video game developer and publisher based in Stockholm.

Starbreeze Studios produced titles including Enclave and Knights of the Temple: Infernal Crusade.

Starbreeze Studios worked on The Darkness, whose sales were considered satisfactory.

Starbreeze Studios partnered with Electronic Arts to develop a reboot to the Syndicate series, but it ended up being a commercial failure, and many staff members moved to rival company MachineGames, established by Starbreeze Studios's founders.

Starbreeze Studios began expanding the company in 2012 with its acquisition of Overkill Software.

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Overkill's first title after the acquisition, Payday 2, helped Starbreeze Studios make a record profit after suffering an accumulated loss of $14.

Starbreeze Studios decided to form Starbreeze after his project, an action role-playing game named Into the Shadows, was canceled.

Starbreeze Studios then decided to found his own studio and began crafting his own game engine.

Starbreeze Studios actively recruited staff among his acquaintances and the studio was established in 1998 in Harnosand, Sweden.

Unable to support itself financially, Starbreeze Studios needed to merge with another developer to continue in business.

However, these features were axed when Starbreeze Studios got into legal troubles with the publisher, resulting in the game's cancellation.

Starbreeze Studios attempted to acquire another studio, Rock Solid Games, but the agreement between the two fell apart and brought both companies financial problems.

Vivendi originally named the game Riddick 2 but Starbreeze Studios disagreed claiming the name would raise expectations among gamers that the remake might not be able to deliver.

Starbreeze Studios then partnered with Electronic Arts for two different games, one was known as Project Redlime, while the other was an action-adventure video game set within the Bourne universe.

Starbreeze Studios shifted from a technology-orientated company to focus more on the core gameplay mechanics of their new project.

The game suffered from a troubled development, with Starbreeze Studios completely reworking the game one year after its initial development.

In 2011, Starbreeze Studios announced that it was partnering with Epic Games to use their engine, Unreal Engine, for their first small titles.

In 2012, Starbreeze Studios announced Cold Mercury, a free-to-play video game and a project codenamed P13.

Starbreeze Studios was in need of new, original properties, and accepted Fares' pitch.

In 2012, Starbreeze Studios announced that they had acquired Overkill Software, the developer of Payday: The Heist, granting them rights to all of Overkill's proprietary technology and intellectual properties.

Payday 2 became Starbreeze Studios's best selling game of all time, and helped the company to make a record profit for the first time after suffering an accumulated loss of $14.

Starbreeze Studios moved its offices from Uppsala to Overkill's offices in Stockholm, and Bo Andersson was named CEO of Starbreeze Studios in 2013 following the acquisition of Overkill.

In May 2015, Starbreeze Studios announced that the company would start publishing video games from independent developers.

The first independent title set to be published by Starbreeze Studios is Raid: World War II, an upcoming four-player, World War II shooter, being developed by Lion Game Lion.

Starbreeze Studios acquired the under-development Valhalla game engine, a VR-ready platform, in 2015 for around 73 million kr, which was planned to be used for all of its subsequent games.

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In February 2016, Starbreeze Studios announced that it would be publishing Dead by Daylight, an asymmetrical, multiplayer, survival horror game developed by Behaviour Interactive.

Starbreeze Studios announced that they had acquired the name and the franchises of Cinemaware a day later.

Core Starbreeze Studios team received investment from Korean publisher Smilegate to develop a new first-person cooperative game set within the Crossfire universe.

In both cases, the respective developers, Double Fine Productions and OtherSide Entertainment, retain all intellectual property rights, while Starbreeze Studios seeks full recovery of their investment and a small amount more from revenues, after which they share further revenues with the developers.

Starbreeze Studios published John Wick Chronicles, a John Wick game developed by WEVR and Grab for virtual reality platforms, released in February 2017.

Starbreeze Studios halted ongoing development work for Payday 2 during this period.

In May 2019, Starbreeze Studios sold its share of Dhruva Interactive to Rockstar Games for, who subsequently merged Dhurva into its Rockstar India studio.

Starbreeze Studios began renewed development on Payday 2 to create new downloadable content, but stated that this would be for purchase, apologizing for reneging on its "forever-free-content" assurance they had made some years prior, with plans to use the revenues to help the company's finances.

Starbreeze Studios's restructuring was completed and approved by the courts by December 2019, about a year after the first financial concerns were raised.

Starbreeze Studios announced in October 2020 that Mikael Nermark had resigned as CEO of Starbreeze Studios AB with immediate effect due to personal reasons.

Starbreeze Studios signed a €50 million publishing deal with Koch Media in March 2021 that fully financed the remaining development, publishing, and post-launch support of Payday 3, with the game targeted for a 2023 release.