Beautiful Game Studios is a British

video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

based in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England. The studio was set up in 2003 to take over the development of the ''

Championship Manager ''Championship Manager'' is a series of association football, football-management simulation video games, the first of which was released in 1992. The ''Championship Manager'' brand and game was conceived by brothers Collyer brothers (game desig ...

'' after its former developer Sports Interactive ceased its involvement. Beautiful Game Studios was majorly restructured in November 2009, losing 80% of its staff.

History

Beautiful Game Studios was founded in 2003, and announced in January 2004 as an internal development team of

Eidos Interactive Square Enix Limited (formerly Domark Limited and Eidos Interactive Limited) is a British subsidiary of the Japanese video game company Square Enix, acting as their European publishing arm. The company formerly owned ''Tomb Raider'', which was in ...

(later renamed Square Enix Europe) that would focus on the development of ''

'', after the original developer of the series, Sports Interactive, departed from Eidos Interactive in 2003. In November 2009, after Eidos Interactive had been acquired by

Square Enix is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational holding company, production enterprise and entertainment conglomerate, best known for its ''Final Fantasy'', ''Dragon Quest'', ''Star Ocean'' and ''Kingdom Hearts'' role-playing video game ...

and renamed Square Enix Europe, Square Enix announced that Beautiful Game Studios would undergo restructuring to "build a successful commercial future" for the ''Championship Manager'' brand. Around 80% of jobs, including the majority of the studio's programming department, were either cut or relocated to

Eidos Shanghai Eidos may refer to: * Eidos (philosophy), a Greek term meaning "form" "essence", "type" or "species". See Plato's theory of forms and Aristotle's theory of universals * Eidos plc, a British software company, which created video game publisher Eid ...

, while incumbent

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

Roy Meredith retained his position. Despite the significant cuts, remained operational as a developer. In September 2010, Beautiful Game Studios announced that they had entered into a strategic partnership with Chinese publisher

Shanda Games Shanda Group is a privately-owned multinational investment firm. With offices in Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, New York and Redwood City, the firm invests in public markets, real estate and venture capital, focusing on companies in the field ...

, which granted Shanda Games the Chinese distribution rights of future ''Championship Manager'' games. The partnership grew largely from the then-enlarged Eidos Shanghai's previous work with Shanda Games, as well as long-term communications between Beautiful Game Studios, Eidos Shanghai, and Shanda Games. The games resulting from this partnership, ''Championship Manager: World of Football'', was announced in July 2011.

References

{{Authority control 2003 establishments in England Square Enix Video game companies established in 2003 Video game companies of the United Kingdom Video game development companies