A quick question:
Are there any privately held game studios older than Stardock still in business?
Stardock’s first game was released in 1994 (Galactic Civilizations) and was incorporated in 1993.
I don’t mean hobbyists but actual studio with full time employees.
Anyone know?
You very well may be..........you old fart!
I was going to say Maxis but they merged with EA quite a while ago if I remember correctly.
You're even older than Spiderweb software, by 1 year. That was the only other one I could think of. Kaser has been around longer, but has no employees.
DELETE.
When in 1993? Ambrosia Software, maker of the great Escape Velocity series, was founded August 18, 1993.
Ah, there we go. Codemasters, founded in 1986.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codemasters
They're not that rare. LucasArts was the first company I checked, and it was founded in 1982.
LucasArts is part of LucasFilm. Codemasters, though seems to be privately held. I'd say that counts.
LucasFilm is privately held. Although, if you included subsidiaries of privately held companies, then you'd also need to include all the Valve and ZeniMax studios, so that's probably cheating.
Valve is privately held. But it's not that old of a studio.
Yeah, I was wondering if any of their subsidiaries were older. Guess not. Did some quick Wikipedia research. Apparently, 1C is privately held. And produces a heck of a lot more than games.
why privately held?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koei
koei was founded in 1978... 1st game in 1983 but merged with techmo a few years ago. but it's a publicly traded company..
Ah Koei, they use to be something special...
the Logic Factory, founded 1993, but they created only Ascendancy and Tone Rebellion that I know, the company is still alive, Ascendancy has become an iPod game
This is an interesting thing to think about...
Do you think, Brad, that staying as a private company will be viable for SD in the future? I'm not a video game market expert, but when you asked this question, it made me think...a lot of the private companies I grew up with are now gone, bought out/merged, or publicly traded...doesn't take an expert to see the trend, but the exact reasoning for it is beyond me...
Money, plain and simple.
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