The story
Founder James Schmalz created Epic Pinball, published by then shareware publisher Epic MegaGames. Bolstered from the success of Epic Pinball and the rising technology movement in the mid-1990s toward realistic 3D graphics, Schmalz founded Digital Extremes in 1993 and the company began co-development with Epic on what would become Epic's Unreal franchise.
Unreal is a first-person shooter, released in 1998, and was followed up with Unreal Tournament in 1999, which received numerous industry awards. Subsequent sequels in the Unreal franchise include Unreal Championship, Unreal Tournament 2003, and Unreal Tournament 2004. The Unreal series has sold more than 15 million units worldwide across Windows, Mac, PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, Xbox, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and other platforms.
According to Scott Miller, the co-founder of the video game company 3D Realms, Digital Extremes was willing to take over development of its much-delayed game Duke Nukem Forever in 2004, but the proposal was rejected by others at 3D Realms, which Miller described as a "fatal suicide shot" for the project.
Digital Extremes released the original third-person shooter, Dark Sector, in 2008 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows. It uses the proprietary Evolution Engine.
Digital Extremes worked with 2K to develop the comic-book franchise video game sequel, The Darkness II, which met with positive reviews. Digital Extremes developed the PlayStation 3 version of BioShock, as well as developed the multiplayer component of the sequel, BioShock 2, while simultaneously developing the multiplayer portion of THQ's first-person shooter Homefront.
Digital Extremes developed the game for the 2013 Star Trek Into Darkness film, working with Bandai Namco and Paramount to develop Star Trek, which was poorly received.
In October 2014, Sumpo Food Holdings Ltd. acquired a majority share of Digital Extremes, with Perfect World Co. acquiring minority shares. Sumpo was rebranded as Leyou in 2015, and by June 2016, had purchased the remaining shares in Digital Extremes.
In 2016, it was revealed that Digital Extremes' game Warframe had been hacked, exposing the email addresses of more than 700,000 players.
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Digital Extremes opened a development studio in Toronto, Canada, and began operations in January 2018.
In December 2020, Leyou was acquired by Tencent, which included Digital Extremes. The developer stated that this would not change how they operate as they remained independent of Tencent, though through Tencent they would be able to provide better support for the Chinese version of the Warframe client.
In July 2022, Digital Extremes publicly revealed its latest free-to-play cooperative online action game, Soulframe, via a cinematic trailer at TennoCon, Digital Extremes' annual fan convention.
In October 2023, James Schmalz stepped down as CEO, with former Warframe director Steve Sinclair promoted to CEO. Community manager Rebecca Ford became the game's new director. In the following month, Digital Extremes reportedly laid off about 30 employees, mostly from its external projects division. While the layoffs were confirmed, the company would not state how many people were affected. It also terminated its partnership with Airship Syndicate, returning Wayfinder to its control.
From Wikipedia’s article on Digital Extremes, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5