Iron Lore Entertainment

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Iron Lore Entertainment

logo
legal form Corporation
founding October 2000
resolution February 2008
Reason for dissolution Business abandonment
Seat Maynard , Massachusetts , USA
Branch Software development
Website www.ironlore.com ( Memento from July 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive )

Iron Lore Entertainment was a computer game developer company founded in October 2000 by Brian Sullivan (co-developer of the Age of Empires series) and Paul Chieffo.

history

At the end of June 2006, the studio published its debut Titan Quest through video game publisher THQ . The action role-playing game takes place in ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia and China and takes up elements from the respective mythology. The long development time (all elements in the game were built by hand) resulted in quite high production costs. In March 2007, the add-on Titan Quest: Immortal Throne followed, according to official information because of the successful sale of the main game and the large global community . Unofficially, however, it was later stated in an interview that no further add-on was planned, because the two titles did not bring the developer enough money.

At the Game Developers Conference 2007, Iron Lore received the Best New Studio Award for his efforts on Titan Quest .

In the October 2007 issue of Games for Windows magazine, it was announced that Iron Lore Entertainment would be involved in the development of Warhammer 40,000 : Dawn of War : Soulstorm, the third add-on to the popular Dawn of War, produced by Relic Entertainment -Series, Will Contribute. It turned out to be their last project.

On February 19, 2008, it was announced on the Iron Lore Entertainment website that the company was no longer actively developing. The team ultimately consisted of 35 people. In a statement, the creative director at THQ , Michael Fitch, subsequently explains the reasons for the closure of the studio. There you can read it on the website of PC Games magazine :

“In addition to gamers, editors and hardware sellers, it is primarily the countless pirates who are to blame. "If only a small number of those who got into the game illegally had spent money on it and recognized the more than 40 hours of entertainment it provided, everything would be different today," said Michael Fitch.

With the pirated copies went along with the bad reputation of Titan Quest, even before the game was even in stores. Pirates who downloaded the game from the Internet before it was published complained in forums about countless bugs that caused the game to crash when starting a quest. Contrary to this [sic!] "Bug reports" the trigger for the crashes was a copy protection.

Michael Fitch fires further criticism towards the hardware salesman: "Developing a PC game is a nightmare anyway. However, these people make it even more difficult. Integrated video chips and integrated audio systems - these two aspects give us particular headaches. Using the cheapest hardware , The complete driver support for these components is often missing. In addition, it is not uncommon for bizarre compatibility conflicts with other hardware ".

Finally, Michael Fitch accuses both players and game editors of a lack of competence. The former are not able to update their PCs with the latest drivers and anti-virus software, the latter seem to have worked improperly in some cases. "

- Michael Fitch : Iron Lore Entertainment closed - Michael Fitch from THQ comments!

After the shutdown, some of the previous Iron Lore employees started a new company called Crate Entertainment .

Development and publications

Developed games

  • Titan Quest (2006)
  • Titan Quest: Immortal Throne (2007)
  • Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm (2008)

Web links