Starbreeze Studios AB is a Swedish video game developer and publisher based in Stockholm. The studios's notable games developed include The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Payday 2 and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Founded by members of the demogroup Triton, the company was merged with O3 Games in 2002 wherein the Starbreeze name was retained. The company produced titles including Enclave and Knights of the Temple: Infernal Crusade. In the early 2000s, cancellations of their projects due to conflicts with publishers and a failed acquisition led to a severe financial crisis, resulting in staff lay-offs during the development of Starbreeze's fourth game, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. This game received critical acclaim and helped Starbreeze establish a reputation for producing high-quality games. The company worked on The Darkness, whose sales were considered satisfactory. Starbreeze partnered with Electronic Arts to develop a reboot to the Syndicate series, but it ended up being a commercial failure, and many staff members moved to rival company MachineGames, established by Starbreeze's founders. As a result, the company shifted part of its focus to developing smaller games, such as Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Starbreeze began expanding the company in 2012 with its acquisition of Overkill Software. Overkill's first title after the acquisition, Payday 2, helped Starbreeze make a record profit after suffering an accumulated loss of $14.4 million since its inception. In 2015, the company announced that it would start publishing video games from independent developers and that it had begun development of a virtual reality headset named Project Star VR. Starbreeze had acquired a license to develop Overkill's The Walking Dead from Skybound Entertainment, but the project fell into development hell and once released in 2018, was poorly reviewed and had poor sales; the title was ultimately pulled and Skybound revoked Starbreeze's license. Having expected a financial boon from this game, Starbreeze spent a year in restructuring from December 2018 to December 2019 to regain financial footing, but had to sell off many of its publishing deals and other steps to be able to move forward. History Founding and merger (1998–2002) Starbreeze Studios was founded by Swedish programmer Magnus Högdahl. Högdahl was a former member of the PC demoscene group Triton, and specialized in making tech demos. He decided to form Starbreeze after his project, an action role-playing game named Into the Shadows, was canceled. He