undertow posts

Big Download Interview: Epic's Mark Rein on Chair Entertainment purchase

by John Callaham May 21st 2008 @ 2:00PM

Cary, NC based Epic Games is unquestionably one of the biggest and most important game developers in the industry. Not only do they make best selling and acclaimed games like the Unreal and Unreal Tournament series and more recently Gears of War, their Unreal Engine game development tools continue to be licensed and used by nearly every major game publisher. On Tuesday, Epic expanded even further with the announcement that they were acquiring Chair Entertainment, the Utah-based developer that previous to the Epic purchase had released the Xbox Live Arcade Undertow. Big Download contacted Epic Games's Vice President Mark Rein soon after the announcement and he gave us a little more info on their latest business deal and how it will affect both Epic and Chair Entertainment.

Continue reading Big Download Interview: Epic's Mark Rein on Chair Entertainment purchase

Filed under: Features, Interviews

Epic Games acquires Chair Entertainment

by John Callaham May 20th 2008 @ 5:05PM

Epic Games is expanding their reach once again. The Unreal, Unreal Tournament and Gears of War developer (and creators of the much used Unreal Engine) have just announced they have purchased Utah-based Chair Entertainment. Specific financial details were not disclosed.

Chair Entertainment was formed in 2005 by Donald and Geremy Mustard. They previously worked at GlyphX, who developed the sci-fi action game Advent Rising (which used Epic's Unreal Engine 2). So far the only game Chair has released was the Xbox Live Arcade game Undertow (which used Unreal Engine 3) but they have already announced plans to develop a game based onthe "Battle Room" scenarios in Ender's Game, the classic sci-fi novel from writer Orson Scott Card. Chair also helped to develop Empire, a near future concept of a second American Civil War that Card wrote up as a novel of the same name in 2006 (a video game and movie are also in development)

The press release announcing the deal revealed that Chair Entertainment would continue to work under that name and will continue to develop new and original properties while using, naturally, Epic's Unreal Engine tech. This is the second time Epic has purchased a game developer. In 2007 it purchased Painkiller developer People Can Fly who helped Epic with the PC port of Gears of War and is currently working on a new and unannounced game.

Filed under: Biz