Warner Bros. Games (formerly Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment) is an American video game publisher based in Burbank, California, and part of the Global Streaming and Interactive Entertainment unit of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). The publisher was founded as Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment on January 14, 2004, under Warner Bros. Entertainment and transferred to its Home Entertainment division when that company was formed in October 2005. Warner Bros. Games manages the wholly owned game development studios TT Games, Rocksteady Studios, NetherRealm Studios, Monolith Productions, WB Games Boston, Avalanche Software, and WB Games Montréal, among others.
History
The foundation of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (WBIE) under Warner Bros. was announced on January 14, 2004, along with the WB Games (Warner Bros. Games) brand, under which WBIE would publish games. Jason Hall, previously of Monolith Productions, was named as its senior vice president. Later that year, Warner Bros. acquired Monolith Productions. In October 2005, Warner Bros. created a new group–Warner Bros. Home Entertainment–and WBIE was transferred as part of it.
The first game that Monolith developed in conjunction with Warner Bros. was The Matrix Online, which SEGA helped co-publish. Warner Bros. also helped distribute both Enter the Matrix and The Matrix: Path of Neo for the Matrix series. In 2006, they bought a 10.3% stake in SCi Entertainment, the owner of Eidos Interactive. That same year, they released their first self-published title (with no co-publishers), Justice League Heroes, which was distributed by Eidos on the Xbox. Also in 2006, British video game publisher Codemasters signed an American distribution deal with Warner Bros; the deal expired in 2011 when Codemasters left for THQ. In 2012, Codemasters and Warner Bros. restarted the distribution deal after THQ went bankrupt.
In 2007, they implemented a five-year plan, the goal of which was to expand in the video game industry and included the acquisition of studios for internal development and the creation of a studio (WB Games) in the Seattle area that will run all the games published and developed by the company; the first acquisition under this plan was Britain's TT Games that same year, for £100 million.
In April 2008, they increased their stake to 35%, gaining distribution rights of all Eidos games in North America. On December 15, 2008, shortly after SCi changed their name to Eidos plc, Warner acquired a total of 10 million shares of the company, raising its owned amount to 19.92%, after an agreement which prevented Time Warner from acquiring more shares was scrapped one month earlier. On January 28, 2009, The Hollywood Reporter reported the deal also gave Warner the rights of the Tomb Raider film series, previously owned by Paramount Pictures. On February 12, 2009, Warner Bros. backed Square Enix's acquisition offer worth £84.3 million for Eidos plc as majority stakeholder.
Warner Bros. announced on February 4, 2009 it had purchased independent developer Snowblind Studios. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition serves to strengthen the publisher's internal development effort. In 2009, Warner purchased most of the assets of American publisher Midway Games, operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, for $49 million. The assets purchased include Midway's studio in Chicago and Surreal Software, resulting in the ownership to the rights to the Joust, Mortal Kombat, The Suffering, Spy Hunter and Wheelman series. Midway had previously worked with Warner Bros. on several games, including Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Midway intended to hold an auction of its assets on June 29, 2009, but no other bids were placed. On July 10, the sale to Warner was completed for approximately . In the process, Warner became the owner of the Blitz: The League series. On July 28, 2009, Midway's Mortal Kombat team was rebranded WB Games Chicago and, in 2010, was merged with Midway Games to form NetherRealm Studios.
On January 13, 2010, it was announced that WBIE would produce and gain exclusive rights to Sesame Street video games, starting in fall 2010 with Elmo's A-to-Zoo Adventure and Cookie's Counting Carnival. On February 23, 2010, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group announced it had acquired a majority stake in independent London-based developer Rocksteady Studios, an independent development studio based in London. Rocksteady and Warner had previously worked together in Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, and have announced they will work in the future with more Warner Bros. licenses.