Frictional Games AB is a Swedish independent video game developer based in Malmö, founded in January 2007 by Thomas Grip and Jens Nilsson. The company specialises in the development of survival horror games with very little or no combat gameplay mechanics. It is best known for its games Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Soma. History Frictional Games was founded by Thomas Grip and Jens Nilsson. Before founding the company, both had little professional experience in the video game industry, having only had done some freelance jobs. The two began co-operating when Nilsson joined Grip on Unbirth, a hobby project that was later cancelled. They subsequently collaborated on other projects and formally established Frictional on 1 January 2007. The company was established in Helsingborg, Sweden, although most members worked remotely from other parts of Europe. Frictional's first game was Penumbra: Overture, based on a tech demo titled Penumbra and released in 2007. It was originally planned to be the first episode in a trilogy, however, due to problems with publisher Lexicon Entertainment, Frictional shifted to a partnership with Paradox Interactive. Under Paradox, the two remaining games in the trilogy were released as one game under the title Penumbra: Black Plague in 2008, followed by an additional expansion pack titled Penumbra: Requiem the same year. Over an exactly three-year-long timespan, Frictional created and self-published Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The game was released on 8 September 2010 to generally favourable reviews, however, Frictional noted that it expected the game to struggle becoming popular and profitable given its lack of a third-party publisher. Amnesia: The Dark Descent sold 36,000 copies within its first month of release, and a total of 1,360,000 copies within the first two years, earning the company a total revenue of about in contrast to their development budget. According to Nilsson, the Frictional team did not know how to continue the Amnesia series and feared that a misattempted Amnesia game would "fail miserably". Instead, the team opted to draft The Chinese Room as a third-party developer to develop a second game, giving them advice on the horror aspects, while The Chinese Room was responsible for the plot and gameplay development. The game, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, was released by Frictional in 2013. During the time of A Machine for Pigs development, Frictional itself started working on a new game, which eventually became Soma, announced shortly after the release of Amnesia: