Unknown Worlds Entertainment is an American

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

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. The studio is best known for the ''

Natural Selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...

'' and ''

Subnautica ''Subnautica'' is an open-world action-adventure game developed and published by Unknown Worlds Entertainment. The game has the player as a non-essential systems maintenance chief who is the only survivor of a spaceship crash on the alien planet ...

'' series. In October 2021, the studio was acquired by South Korean video game developer

Krafton Krafton Inc. ( ko, 주식회사 컴퍼니 크래프톤) is a South Korean video game holding company based in Bundang-gu, Seongnam. It was created in November 2018 to serve as the parent company for Bluehole, founded by Chang-Byung-gyu in Seoul ...

History

Unknown Worlds was formed in May 2001 by Charlie Cleveland and began life as a group of developers responsible for the development of the high-profile free

mod Mod, MOD or mods may refer to: Places * Modesto City–County Airport, Stanislaus County, California, US Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Mods (band), a Norwegian rock band * M.O.D. (Method of Destruction), a band from New York City, US ...

for ''

Half-Life Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ato ...

'', ''

''. The success of ''Natural Selection'' convinced Cleveland to start work on a commercial sequel to the game: ''

Natural Selection 2 '' Natural Selection 2'' is a multiplayer video game which combines first-person shooter and real-time strategy rules. It is set in a science fiction universe in which a human team fights an alien team for control of resources and territory in ...

''. Soon after, Cleveland founded Unknown Worlds Entertainment as a commercial computer games studio. Although the

casual games A casual game is a video game targeted at a mass market audience, as opposed to a Hardcore gamer, hardcore game, which is targeted at Gamer#Dedication spectrum, hobbyist gamers. Casual games may exhibit any type of gameplay and genre. They genera ...

market is not the intended direction of Unknown Worlds, ''Zen of Sudoku'', a casual puzzle computer game based on the popular logic puzzle

Sudoku Sudoku (; ja, 数独, sūdoku, digit-single; originally called Number Place) is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row ...

, was created in November 2006 in order to generate revenue towards funding the development of ''Natural Selection 2''. Charlie Cleveland, one of the developers of Unknown Worlds Entertainment, cited casual games development as a "last option" for funding this sequel, having been unwilling to sacrifice control of the company to external investors. In October 2006, Max McGuire became the studio's co-founder, having previously worked at

Iron Lore Entertainment Iron Lore Entertainment was a video game developer that was founded in October 2000 by Brian Sullivan (game designer), Brian Sullivan and Paul Chieffo. In late June 2006, the company released ''Titan Quest'', an action role-playing video game for ...

as Lead Engine Programmer. McGuire became the Technical Director of UWE and development of ''Natural Selection 2'' began in earnest. Max and Charlie then attracted a group of angel investors including Richard Kain, Matthew Le Merle, Ira Rothken and Colin Wiel to back the company after a meeting at GDC in San Francisco. A year later, Unknown Worlds released ''Decoda'' as a commercial debugger for the

Lua Lua or LUA may refer to: Science and technology * Lua (programming language) * Latvia University of Agriculture * Last universal ancestor, in evolution Ethnicity and language * Lua people, of Laos * Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...

programming language. This application was created to aid with development of ''Natural Selection 2'', whose game code was largely being written in Lua. Later on in development of ''Natural Selection 2'', the studio announced it had changed engine from the

Source engine Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve. It debuted as the successor to GoldSrc in 2004 with the release of '' Counter-Strike: Source'' and '' Half-Life 2''. Updates to Source were released in incremental versions, with the engine being su ...

to their own proprietary engine developed in-house. After consulting their fanbase on a possible name for their new engine, it was finally named the Evolution engine. Later, it transpired that the name Evolution was already taken and Spark was chosen as the name for the engine. In June 2008, Cory Strader was hired as art director. Strader had been a previous key member of the development team for ''Natural Selection''. In May 2009, Unknown Worlds began taking pre-orders for standard and special edition versions of ''Natural Selection 2''. ''Natural Selection 2'' was released on 31 October 2012. Perfect World acquired a 40% stake in Unknown Worlds Entertainment in August 2011 for . It raised this to a

controlling interest A controlling interest is an ownership interest in a corporation with enough voting stock shares to prevail in any stockholders' motion. A majority of voting shares (over 50%) is always a controlling interest. When a party holds less than the majo ...

in February 2013 by acquiring a further 20% for . During its 2019

fiscal year A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ...

, Perfect World sold the majority of its shares in Unknown Worlds to an undisclosed entity. It sold the remainder by August 2021. In October 2021, South Korean video game developer

, known for having developed ''

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds ''PUBG: Battlegrounds'' (previously known as ''PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds'') is a battle royale game developed by PUBG Studios and published by Krafton. The game, which was inspired by the Japanese film '' Battle Royale'' (2000), is based ...

'' and ''

TERA TERA is a shielded twisted pair connector for use with Category 7 twisted-pair data cables, developed by The Siemon Company and standardised in 2003 by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) with the reference IEC 61076-3-104. Th ...

'', announced that it would acquire Unknown Worlds, and that it would continue to operate as an independent game studio.

Games

*''

'' (2002) *''Zen of Sudoku'' (2006) *''

'' (2012) *''

'' (2018) *'' Subnautica: Below Zero'' (2021) *''

Moonbreaker ''Moonbreaker'' is an upcoming turn-based strategy video game developed by Unknown Worlds Entertainment and published by Krafton. The game was released via early access on September 29, 2022 for Microsoft Windows. The game was described by the ...

'' (2022)

References

External links

* {{Official website Video game publishers Companies based in San Francisco American companies established in 2001 Video game companies established in 2001 Video game companies of the United States Video game development companies 2001 establishments in California 2021 mergers and acquisitions American subsidiaries of foreign companies