Eidos Interactive

Eidos
legal form	Limited
founding	1990
Seat	Wimbledon , Surrey , UK
Branch	Software development

Eidos Interactive Limited was mainly as a publisher active computer game manufacturer with headquarters in Wimbledon , Surrey , UK , and offices among others in France , Germany , Australia , Spain , USA and Japan . Eidos was best known for its Tomb Raider and Hitman series. In 2005 the company was taken over by the SCi Entertainment Group , which operated under the name Eidos plc from 2008 until the takeover by Square Enix in April 2009.

Since the takeover, the Eidos brand has been used by the Canadian studio Eidos Montreal and other studios that previously belonged to Eidos.

Company history

When the company was founded in 1990, it initially specialized in video compression processes. It was not until 1995, with the acquisition of Domark Software , that computer games began to be developed .

With the acquisition of Eidos by its competitor SCi Entertainment in May 2005, the previous Board met on 17 May 2005, including Ian Livingstone closed back and SCi sat among other things, its own chairman ( CEO ) Jane Cavanagh to the Board of Directors of Eidos. Since then, SCi has published all games under the Eidos label and finally renamed itself Eidos plc in 2008.

In February 2009, Square Enix announced that it would take over Eidos Interactive's parent company Eidos plc (formerly SCi Entertainment). In early March, the two companies agreed on a purchase price of £ 84.3 million (~ $ 120 million). On March 25, 2009, the Eidos shareholders finally voted for the takeover by Square Enix at a general meeting.

With the takeover of Square Enix, the name Eidos was given up as a publishing label and the company was renamed Square Enix. Only the developer studio Eidos Montreal kept its name.

Others

In 2005, Eidos GmbH Germany provided a. caused a sensation in the file-sharing scene by having their works monitored by the company Logistep AG in exchange platforms and then using a law firm to enforce appropriate warnings with claims for damages.

In December 2007 there were several press releases about Eidos (e.g. Heise), which had successfully put pressure on the American game magazine GameSpot to dismiss an editor employed there. The editor had rated the game " Kane & Lynch: Dead Men " with only 6.0 / 10.0 points and said in a video review, "Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is an ugly, ugly game". Eidos had advertised extensively on the portal for Kane & Lynch and threatened the owner of GameSpot , CNet, to cut the six-figure advertising budget for 2008.

In addition, Eidos advertised on the official website at this time with ratings and test quotes that did not exist. According to the website, Gamespy and Game Informer gave the game five out of five stars or a maximum rating. At Gamespy, however, the game received three out of five stars, Game Informer, on the other hand, does not work with a five-tier system and only rated the game with 70 out of 100 points. The Gamespy quote used on the website was also not taken from the test, but from a "preview". The quote from the Game Informer cannot be found in the review there either. On the German version of the website at that time there was also a reference to a review by Kotaku, which was also supposedly five out of five stars. Here, too, the following applies: Both the rating and the quotation do not come from the actual test.

In addition, in July 2009, according to a blog entry by the RAM Raider, Eidos is said to have banned the publication of tests for the action game Batman: Arkham Asylum until the end of the month. However, magazines that give the game a rating of more than 90 points and print the "Dark Knight" on their cover should be excluded from this. RAM Raider claims that tests that appear early are "bought".