The story
Sauerteig and Smital grew up within blocks of each other in East Berlin and met as teenagers. Neither had access to video games or computers; they learned about Western culture from John Peel's radio programs and punk shows staged in churches. Sauerteig took part in the Leipzig demonstrations that preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall, and later studied video arts at the Berlin Institute of Design. Smital studied typography and magazine design at the same school.
Vermehr was born in Germany and raised in Venezuela and Guatemala, where his father worked in pharmaceuticals. He grew up with Apple II computers but felt culturally isolated, and moved to Berlin after finishing school. He studied design in Cologne and later joined MetaDesign, where he met Sauerteig, then a student intern, in 1994. They began publishing pixel art on a website after Sauerteig graduated in 1996, and brought Smital in soon after to form eBoy. Earlier work had been distributed on floppy disks passed among friends.
The studio's work is inspired by "shopping, supermarkets, TV, toy commercials, LEGO, computer games, the news, magazines". Vermehr has also cited the picture books of Ali Mitgutsch as an influence.
From Wikipedia’s article on EBoy, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4