Cryptic Studios, Inc. - MobyGames (original) (raw)

Cryptic Studios, Inc., located in Los Gatos, California (USA) was established in June 2000 and was initially an independent developer of massively multiplayer online games for the PC and next generation consoles. Its first game, City of Heroes, was launched in April 2004. In October 2005, it launched the sequel City of Villains.

In February 2008, Cryptic Studios announced that it was developing Champions Online, a high-action, totally customizable, superhero MMORPG based on the Champions role-playing game. It was released in September 2009. In November 2008, Cryptic Studios recruited Flagship Studios co-founder Bill Roper as Design Director and one month later, in December 2008, Atari announced to have acquired the company for 26.7 million dollar, along with a performance-linked deal. Ubisoft also wanted to acquire the company, but was beaten to the punch by Atari.

The studio's first title developed for Atari was the MMORPG Star Trek Online. It was released in February 2010.

In May 2011 Atari's financial results revealed that the studio was listed as "discontinued operations" and Atari said to be looking for a buyer. Support for Star Trek Online and Champions Online was continued, as well as work on a new title, Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter. Atari stated to move on to fewer, but more profitable releases as well as expanding into mobile and casual games, and relying more on external development teams. It was announced a few weeks later that Cryptic had been acquired by Perfect World Entertainment (later Gearbox Publishing San Francisco).

Despite revenues of €15.9 million over the last 12 months before the announcement, Cryptic still made a loss of €5.3 million. That was however an improvement over the €12.6 million loss of the year before.

On 3 November 2023, the company laid off an undiscosed number of employees and was moved to the Deca Games division of the Embracer Group.