Surreal software

Surreal Software, Inc.
legal form	Incorporated
founding	1995
resolution	2009
Reason for dissolution	Acquisition and dissolution by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Seat	Seattle , Washington , United States
Branch	Software development

Surreal Software was an American computer game development studio based in Seattle , Washington .

Company history

Surreal Software was founded in 1995 by Alan Patmore, Stuart Denman, Nick Radovich and Mike Nichols. The studio gained greater fame in 1999 with the release of the action adventure Drakan via the Sony subsidiary Psygnosis . Surreal developed the Riot engine for the game . In 2003 it was continued with the PlayStation 2-exclusive Drakan: The Ancients' Gates . In April 2004, Surreal was taken over by Midway Games . In 2003, the game project The Lord of the Rings: The Treason of Isengard , developed for Vivendi Universal Games , was discontinued. In 2005, Surreal's last game, The Suffering: Ties That Bind, was released .

In July 2009, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment took over the studio in the wake of the break-up of Midway Games . Under Warner Bros. Surreal was jointly managed with Monolith Productions and Snowblind Studios under the collective name WB Games Seattle, but the brand was still maintained. The workforces of the three companies were merged without public notice. In August 2010, the British games website Computer and Video Games (CVG) relied on internal information that Surreal's last announced project This is Vegas , which was still started under Midway Games, had been discontinued. Statements were also made about the secret closure of the studio in June, but these were not officially confirmed. In 2011 another job advertisement for Surreal Software was reported, but no new titles were announced under the Surreal logo. The assumption about the closure in 2012 was supported by the statement of a Kotaku columnist, according to which a wave of layoffs for WB Games Seattle in November 2011 had mainly hit Snowblind Studios and WB Games Seattle was now "more or less monolith productions".