Eidos Hungary (formerly Mithis Entertainment) was a Hungarian
video game developer based in
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
,
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...
.
History
The company was founded as Mithis Entertainment in March 2002 by former
Philos Laboratories
Philos Laboratories (also known as Philos Laboratories Software Developer Ltd. or Philos Labs and later Philos Entertainment, Inc) was a Hungarian computer software development company known for working with producer Ubisoft and CDV Software Ente ...
employees. Between 2002 and 2006, the studio produced ''
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident'' (2004), a
strategy video game
Strategy is a major video game genre that emphasizes thinking and planning over direct instant action in order to achieve victory. Although many types of video games can contain strategic elements, as a genre, strategy games are most commonly defi ...
, and ''Creature Conflict: The Clan Wars'' (2005), a
shooter game
Shooter video games or shooters are a subgenre of action video games where the focus is almost entirely on the defeat of the character's enemies using the weapons given to the player. Usually these weapons are firearms or some other long-range ...
. In 2006, British
video game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer.
They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ( ...
Eidos Interactive acquired Mithis Entertainment and renamed it Eidos Hungary. In July 2006,
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, w ...
reported Hungarian authorities investigated intellectual property theft complaints by Mithis and MGE.
SCi Entertainment
SCi Entertainment Group plc (formerly The Sales Curve Limited and SCi (Sales Curve Interactive) Limited) was a British video game publisher based in London. The company was founded in 1988 by Jane Cavanagh and floated on the stock exchange in 1 ...
categorically denied wrongdoing, stating the article confused ''Battlestations: Midway'' and ''
Joint Task Force'' to clarify. SCi took over the development after being dissatisfied with MGE by exercised its contractual right, which MGE demanded compensation for prompting the allegation according to SCi. Following the acquisition, Eidos Hungary went on to work on
real-time tactics
Real-time tactics (RTT)(Article at IGN discussing their perception of RTS and related genres as of 2006. RTT is discussed as a new and not yet established genre from the publisher's perspective, so currently all RTT possible titles are still con ...
games ''
Battlestations: Midway'' (2007) and ''
Battlestations: Pacific'' (2009).
On 19 April 2010,
Square Enix Europe
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 i ...
confirmed that they had shut down Eidos Hungary in October 2009, due to the discontinuation of the ''Battlestations'' franchise. The CEO of Square Enix Europe, Phil Rogers, said “We were pleased with Eidos Hungary, but I think we realised that to be first or best in the RTS genre was going to be really challenging. It wasn’t necessarily something we were going to win”.
References
Video game companies established in 2002
2009 disestablishments in Hungary
Defunct video game companies of Hungary
Video game companies disestablished in 2009
Square Enix
Hungarian companies established in 2002
{{SquareEnix-stub