Hazelight Studios is a video game development company based in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

, Sweden. Founded by director Josef Fares in 2014, the company is best known for developing cooperative multiplayer games '' A Way Out'' and '' It Takes Two''. Both games were published by

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...

under the EA Originals label.

History

Prior to founding Hazelight, Josef Fares was a film director. His first video game project was

Starbreeze Studios Starbreeze Studios AB is a Swedish video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Stockholm. The studios's notable games developed include ''The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay'', ''Payday 2'' and ''Brothers: ...

' '' Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons'', which received critical acclaim when it was released in 2013. Following the success of ''Brothers'', Fares decided to found a new video game production company based in Stockholm, with the focus of creating a mature, story-focused game. He was joined by the core ''Brothers'' development team from Starbreeze, which included Claes Engdal, Emil Claeson, Anders Olsson and Filip Coulianos. The studio was announced at

The Game Awards 2014 The Game Awards 2014 ceremony, which honored the best video games of 2014, took place at The AXIS in Las Vegas on December 5, 2014. The show was produced and hosted by Geoff Keighley. The ceremony was the first for The Game Awards, which replace ...

by publisher

, which also revealed that it would publish the studio's first title. EA allowed Hazelight to share space at

DICE Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing g ...

so that they could fully focus on creating their game. The company's first game, '' A Way Out'', was announced by EA at E3 2017. It was part of EA Originals, EA's initiative to support independent games. The program allowed Hazelight to retain full creative control while receiving most of the game's profit after the development cost was recouped. EA gave the team a budget of $3.7 million. The game was released in March 2018 and it received generally positive reviews and sold 1 million copies within 2 weeks. The studio partnered with EA again for their next title, '' It Takes Two'', a co-op platform game released in March 2021. The game won several awards during The Game Awards, including best family game, best multiplayer game, and Game of the Year. In January 2022, Hazelight announced that they partnered with Dmitri M. Johnson and his company DJ2 Entertainment to adapt ''It Takes Two'' for television and film. It was then announced in April 2022 that Amazon Studios picked up the project to develop into a film adaptation to be written by Pat Casey and

Josh Miller Joshua or Josh Miller may refer to: Musicians *Joshua Miller, American musician with duo Nemesis also featured in '' Jacob and Joshua: Nemesis Rising'' *Josh Miller, musician with The Pappy Johns Band Sportsmen * Josh Miller (field hockey) in ...

with

Dwayne Johnson Dwayne Douglas Johnson (born May 2, 1972), also known by his ring name The Rock, is an American actor and former professional wrestler. Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, he was integral to the developm ...

, Dany Garcia, and Hiram Garcia attached as producers under

Seven Bucks Productions Seven Bucks Productions is a production company involved with various platforms and mediums, credited with creating original releases for television, film, emerging technologies, and digital networks. The studio was co-created and founded by Dwa ...

Games

References

External links

* {{Josef Fares Companies based in Stockholm Video game development companies Swedish companies established in 2014 Video game companies established in 2014 Video game companies of Sweden Indie video game developers