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Playdead

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Type
  
Private

Headquarters
  
Copenhagen, Denmark

Key people
  
Arnt Jensen

Founders
  
Dino Patti, Arnt Jensen

Industry
  
Video game industry

Area served
  
Worldwide

Video games
  
Inside, Limbo

Playdead playdeadcomcssimgpddarkv11png

Formerly called
  
Underholdningsbranchen ApS (2006–2008) Limbo ApS (2008–2012)

Founded
  
7 December 2006, Copenhagen, Denmark

Profiles

Playdead s inside full walkthrough makers of limbo 1080p hd


Playdead ApS is a Danish independent video game developer based in Copenhagen. Game designers Arnt Jensen and Dino Christian Patti created the company in 2006 to develop Limbo, which released in 2010 to critical acclaim. After a year of Xbox 360 exclusivity, Playdead released ports of the game to PlayStation 3, Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Android.

Contents

During Xbox's E3 2014 conference, Playdead announced their second game, Inside, which was a spiritual successor to Limbo. It was released for Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, and PlayStation 4 in 2016 to critical acclaim, and was hailed as a worthy successor of Limbo.

Inside gameplay walkthrough part 1 playdead s inside indie game for xbox one and pc


History

Arnt Jensen, a former IO Interactive developer, drew sketches in 2004 that led him to conceptualize Limbo. Having tried programming himself, he eventually sought for additional help through an art-based teaser for the game in 2006. This led to a meeting between Jensen and Dino Christian Patti. Patti soon realized the project was larger than the two of them, and together they founded the company, initially using their private funds and government grants before obtaining larger investments. Playdead eventually came to have eight employees during Limbo's development, with temporary increases of up to 16 through freelancers. Limbo's success led them to be able to reacquire the company back from investors, making Playdead completely independent.

Within the same year as Limbo's release, Playdead began working on Project 2, what would later become Inside. The game was partially financed by the Danish Film Institute. Considered a spiritual successor to Limbo, Inside has many of the same themes, including being a 2.5D platform game using a primarily monochrome palette. After using a custom game engine for Limbo, Playdead used Unity to simplify development and a custom temporal anti-aliasing filter which was released in March 2016 under an open-source license. The game was officially announced at the E3 2014 with planned release in 2015, but was later pushed to mid-2016 for further refinement but had a demo at PAX Prime in August 2015. Martin Stig Andersen created the soundtrack again after Limbo, creating sound via bone conduction with a human skull. Inside was first released in June for Xbox One, and later on Microsoft Windows, and received more overwhelming praise than Limbo.

Shortly after the release of Inside, on 19 July 2016, co-founder and former CEO Dino Christian Patti left the company, selling his shares to Jensen. Patti felt that he was leaving Playdead "in a state where it can definitely manage itself", and stated "Following almost 10 incredible years building Playdead from an idea to two dents in the games industry, I'm leaving to seek new challenges." Danish newspaper Dagbladet Børsen reported that a rift had developed between Patti and Jensen around 2015, that Patti described to Kotaku as "the supposed timeline for the next project(s) and where I am in my life now". The rift led to Jensen submitting a resignation letter to Patti from his position as creative director, though intending to stay on as a company executive. The letter had been misinterpreted by Patti as a full resignation from the company, and he subsequently removed Jensen's name from the Central Business Register for Playdead. This led to confrontation between the two and their representative lawyers that required intervention of the Danish Business Authority to resolve. This ultimately led to Patti being forced to take a payout of 50 million Danish krones (about US$7.2 million) for his shares. Patti was disappointed on the way his involvement with Playdead ended, but said that "Arnt has been a really good friend and business partner for many years".

In a Twitter message posted in January 2017, Playdead affirmed that since the release of Inside they have been working on a third game, though details of it have yet to be provided.

References

Playdead Wikipedia