Digital Extremes is a Canadian video game developer founded in 1993 by James Schmalz. They are best known for creating Warframe, a free-to-play cooperative online action game, and co-creating Epic Games' Unreal series of games. Digital Extremes is headquartered in London, Ontario. In 2014, 61% of the company was sold to Chinese holding company Multi Dynamic, now Leyou, for $73 million. President James Schmalz and two partners retained 39% of Digital Extremes, and will continue to manage it. On May 22, 2016 Leyou exercised a call option and increased their stake to 97% of Digital Extremes for a total consideration of $138.2 million US. On December 23, 2020, Tencent bought Leyou for 1.3 billion dollars, which included the majority stake in Digital Extremes that Leyou held. Now, Digital Extremes is owned by Tencent. History Founder James Schmalz created Epic Pinball, published by then shareware publisher, Epic MegaGames. Bolstered from the success of Epic Pinball and the rising technology movement in the mid-'90s toward realistic 3D graphics, Schmalz founded Digital Extremes in 1993 and the company began co-development with Epic on what would become Epic's Unreal franchise. Unreal is a first-person shooter, released in 1998, and was followed up with Unreal Tournament in 1999, which received numerous industry awards. Subsequent sequels in the Unreal franchise include Unreal Championship, Unreal Tournament 2003, and Unreal Tournament 2004. The Unreal series has sold more than 15 million units worldwide across a multitude of game platforms including PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, Xbox, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Mac and PC. According to Scott Miller, the cofounder of the video game company 3D Realms, Digital Extremes was willing to take over development of their much-delayed game Duke Nukem Forever in 2004. However, the proposal was rejected by others at 3D Realms, which Miller described as a "fatal suicide shot" for the project. After years of working in the same universe with Unreal, Digital Extremes broadened its library and technology with development of its original intellectual property, Dark Sector. A third-person shooter released in 2008 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, Dark Sector used Digital Extremes' proprietary game engine, the Evolution Engine. Digital Extremes worked with 2K to develop the comic-book franchise video game sequel, The Darkness II, which met with positive reviews. Digital Extremes developed the PlayStation 3 version of BioShock, as well as developed the multiplayer component of the sequel, BioShock 2, while simultaneously developing the